Chapter 84: Encounter

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I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.

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18 October 1992, Hogwarts

The Diary was connected to the wards of the room somehow and put on an illusion for Harry to look at. The Potter scion almost jumped when he heard a voice behind him, "Hello Harry Potter."

He turned and took a look at a brown-haired teenage boy that looked around sixteen and Harry instinctively knew who that was, "Hello Tom Riddle."

The boy stiffened the moment he heard his name being uttered and Harry took his time to analyze how his opponent looked. As much as he hated to admit it, the teenager had an imposing presence and possessed an unsettling air of mystery that seemed to radiate from him. His tall and lean frame commanded attention, every movement executed with an eerie grace. The porcelain pallor of his skin contrasted sharply with the inky blackness of his neatly combed hair, which fell in perfect precision over his forehead.

Yeah, Harry could see how he could charm a starving man into giving him food. Physically, he was pretty much attractive enough to get away with a lot. But all that innocence disappeared when he met the teenager's eyes. A pair of piercing, intelligent eyes, the colour of liquid mercury, gazed out from beneath the arching brows, their intensity was downright unnerving. Harry understood why he was so unnerved. These eyes were familiar; they were the ones he saw when he looked in a mirror. It wasn't the colour or the shape, but the hidden intelligence and cunning that came with it. There was even a trace of the viciousness that Harry likes to deny he has, but the boy that became Lord Voldemort had in spades.

Only in Riddle's case, his viciousness was carefully hidden by a faint, calculating smile that played upon his lips, which was accentuated by the sharp angles of his chiselled features, giving the boy a particularly aristocratic look.

The Potter scion could understand how people could fall into his charm so easily. The other boy was practically screaming 'mystery', and in the process of trying to solve him, you would end up entangled in his web.

All of this analysis occurred in a fraction of a second, which the other boy used to hide his surprise, "You know who I am?"

Harry shrugged, "Tom Marvolo Riddle, son of Merope Gaunt and a muggle, Thomas Riddle, which she named you after. You are one of the most brilliant minds to come out of Hogwarts, becoming the Slytherin Prefect, and Head boy, and pretty much ruling your entire house even when you were considered to have no magical ancestry. You later took on the moniker of Lord Voldemort and started a civil war, after which you blew yourself up in a magical accident trying to kill a baby. But that's not you, is it? You a shard of that person, a remnant of the man that people feared uttering his false name."

Riddle obviously didn't like that Harry knew so much about him. He definitely hated being in the backfoot in our conversation. The Potter scion could see him gritting his teeth in anger before uttering, "And you, my dear Potter, are a seer…"

Harry raised an eyebrow at this. He could see where Riddle could see it, and it was scarily accurate in a way. The fact that the boy was able to see that Harry held some information about the future, not that it was relevant now, "And how did you come to this conclusion…"

The older boy laughed, "Well, the fact that you were chasing my diary twice in a row. You knew that I was going to open the chamber of secrets, you knew the entrance of the chamber, enough to make your little plans. The counters in the common room and the classrooms, and the rune stone underneath the sink. I have to commend you, they are very inventive solutions, but they gave you away. I can't really blame you, though, you are a little out of your league, little seer. Perhaps if you were older…"

"I'm sorry to tell you that I'm not a seer," Harry answered while hiding a grimace, "but I guess that's a nice guess."

The older boy didn't seem to want to let go of the theory, "No, you were able to detect me, but my magical camouflage seemed to throw you off, some kind of magical sensing? It would explain you hunting the diary, but not the chamber…"

"Unless I had already marked the chamber before you even came to Hogwarts," Harry interjected.

"That's even more evidence for the Seer theory," Riddle commented.

"It would be if this was the only place I marked. You see, Hogwarts is so boring. These brats don't even understand the gift they have, or how bad things could have been for them, they don't appreciate magic. Not like we do, don't they?"

Harry saw the gleam of interest in Riddle's cold eyes, so he continued, "So, when I'm bored as the professors try to dumb down the curriculum, I either start my own project, or I try to solve a puzzle, and what better puzzle than the chamber of secrets. I have to say, you played them masterfully. Blaming Hagrid who happened to be hiding an Acromantula was ingenious. They were all looking for reasons to expel him anyway, and you gave it to them. In wartime, they didn't want people to panic and since you stopped the attack afterwards. You stuck to patterns, hiding in the shadows and attacking retreating muggleborns, petrifying them at random places in the castle at random times. You even gave yourself an alibi when a student was attacked while you were in class. That must have confused Dumbledore…"

Riddle snorted, "That man was always too meddlesome for his own good."

"Yeah, he's still as much of a condescending meddling ass now. But there's something I couldn't help but notice. I could tell that your weapon is a Basilisk. There were no signs of wand magic, and a beast controlled by Slytherin had to be a snake since he was a parselmouth. Add in the fact that it had to be long lived eliminates a lot of serpents. So, each student petrified had a terrified expression on their face, so they had to see the snake itself. Assuming the large size since a few were looking up, it's obvious that the method of attack had to be visual. So, by removing the other possibilities, the beast was either something of Salazar Slytherin's creation or a Basilisk, where the chances of petrification were slim. Unless you were aiming for petrification for some reason, and that suggests advanced planning. You were following a pattern of attacking muggleborns, but you made a mistake. Myrtle Warren, you didn't want to kill her, and you risked shutting down the school, something you couldn't allow to happen."

Riddle shook his head with a regretful expression on his face, "She wasn't supposed to be in the bathroom. The Basilisk hadn't activated the protection measures since it said it was uncomfortable. I should have been firmer and poor Myrtle paid the price for my oversight."

Harry nodded, "And that was a security risk since the entrance to the chamber was so close. So, after looking around and interrogating her ghost, I found out where the chamber was and added some measures that would warn me. I had deduced you were the most likely culprit to the crimes, murderers often try to join the investigation of their crimes, it's a common trait in people with sociopathic tendencies. Or maybe you wanted to make sure you framed Hagrid, either way worked. And when I looked closer into you, I realized what you became. Your name, an anagram, if only people would have realized. But the only thing missing, the only little detail that I don't have is why? Why target muggleborns? Why risk returning to a war-torn country for seemingly no reason?"

"They were Mudbloods. I was simply fulfilling my ancestor's wishes," the teenager protested.

Harry shook his head, "No, that's not quite it. Salazar Slytherin existed before the Statute of Secrecy was put in place. Purebloods were simply nobles, and Muggleborns were often peasants. There was a clear separation between the two classes. He didn't care about blood purity since that movement started out centuries later. So, what was your plan, your real plan?"

Riddle looked uncomfortable being on the back foot and just sighed, "Dumbledore, he was my target. Do you have any idea what it was like seeing an Archmage of all people just stay out of the war only to do his best to slowly destroy our society instead? He was the Gryffindor head of house, and he never pushed them, never asked them to do better. Hell, he was actively removing books from the library without anyone knowing. Well, I noticed them since I was actively looking for them. I saw the monster that could be born because of his negligence, and I wanted to push the public enough, destroy enough of his reputation so that he would have to start fighting the war and leave the school just to get back the goodwill of the Wizengamot. He is supposed to be a deterrent to stop Grindelwald from attacking Hogwarts as he did to Durmstrung. Unfortunately, Dumbledore was so attached to the damn castle and practically refused to leave. It was so infuriating and then I made a mistake with Myrtle, and I just couldn't let myself risk killing another student, or worse, having the school close down. Professor Dippet would have been crucified, and Dumbledore would have been the prime candidate as a Headmaster, and you saw how that ended up. Entire magical fields have been banned. The curriculum is now a joke. Hell, fifth years in my generation were much more competent than your graduates, and that's in every single field. That's not speaking on how he pretty much perverted Alchemy into a source of income tied solely to him."

Harry snorted, "That seems very unlikely. The chances of success are very slim if did it this way. Even if Myrtle hadn't died, Dumbledore wouldn't have unwillingly left the castle."

The older student became enraged at the accusation, "Well, I HAD TO DO SOMETHING! All I wanted was to build a better world, where everyone is equal. You've seen it, haven't you? How the muggleborns are still considered peasants, and how little room they have to rise in our society. I want to give them opportunities to start their own families, their own crests. I wanted to create a society without any good or evil, only power."

"And aren't old families more powerful than muggleborns? They literally have centuries of magical knowledge at the tip of their fingers. It wouldn't change much, would it?"

"It would give them hope," Tom interjected, "I would give them hope. Getting muggleborn petrified wasn't just to get Dumbledore expelled since he was our deterrent. The Wizengamot allowed him to not fight because he was protecting the students, and if he failed, he would be forced to go back to the frontline and hopefully die. But what this would do is give Muggleborns more rights and more protection, or if that failed, the other muggleborns would start protesting, forcing the ministry to make some changes. Is it so bad that I wanted a better world for me and the others that would suffer and be considered to be outsiders to this beautiful world?"

"And yet, here you are attacking muggleborns once more…"

"I am being careful this time, no Myrtle incident is going to happen anytime soon. But this is my chance, our chance, to kick Dumbledore out of Hogwarts. For the betterment of wizard-kind, to create our world, we can't rely on Dumbledore. I'm not asking you to trust me, all I'm asking for is a chance to change the world. The people petrified aren't in pain, they aren't in danger, they're only a message. And muggleborns would gladly miss a few months of their lives in exchange for getting a better future, wouldn't they? What I am doing is a gift to everyone. Are you so inflexible that you wouldn't risk improving our world, just out of pettiness?"

The Potter scion gave the older boy a warm smile before speaking, "You're full of shit, Riddle."

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I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.