LOVE

Love is the answer that I found after observing interactions between the students who were with me in Hogwarts. Love, like I have been preaching does not make you powerful or courageous but rather blind and stupid, but the real power of love is to make us believe the opposite. I had been overlooking these interactions as I believed all I would ever need was power and that is the naive thinking which was rectified by interacting with Nicholas.

As such I started making observational notes on just how far would this disillusion make a person go. I started manipulating certain individuals to make them make unreasonable requests of their friends, family or lovers and carefully observed what and how much was the effect.

By the time it was time for me to take my NEWTs I had started to include some soft teachers and Elphias to extend the range of my experiments. Elphias was pretty easy to manipulate and by the end of the year I had him convinced to leave behind his family and permanently follow me to what he thought was to be a trip around the world. He did not and would have never realised that I had been making all the bookings under his name.

Elphias was a pure-blood wizard and not just a normal child but the heir to the noble house of doge. Doge family was a lower nobility but still a nobility nonetheless. A heir to any noble house had a certain social standing upon the completion of their education leading to them being protected by certain things from the ministry as well as other noble and ancient families.

After completing my education I decided to move my experiments on a much larger stage to confirm my theories and begin my plan for utter dominance. The problem to all this was that though I was considered a genius like never seen before it was only in Britain and that to without any backing. I knew my fate if I was to be entangled with the community after my stint at Hogwarts, it would be like being a lion but rather than in the jungle he would be one in the auction being forced to part with his dignity and freedom for the chance to live.

I was sure, given a bit of time I would have the power and the understanding to come back and make it to the place where no one could even think of being opposite me. To start my grand plans I had to perform so spectacularly on the NEWTs that I end my journey of Hogwarts not only as a perfect student but as a genius that was never seen before. That's the place where my acquaintance with Nicholas would come into play.

NEWTs are considered to be tough just because there is a need for having your personal contribution in the insights of the subject, which is mainly shown by your practical usage of said subject into the problems faced in the real world and not in controlled environment. Most students had been only exposed to magic in the controlled way irrespective of being from the magical community or from the muggle world. The muggle students as is expected have no threats to be exposed to when they return to the non magical community and the magical children are never exposed to harm by their over protective parents with due to excessive love or excessive neglect.

This leads to them being unable to comprehend multiple subjects to pass through during the NEWTs and end up selecting only few that they or their parents believe will help them when in the society. This is the foolishness that has led to people in the later years to believe that the subjects are supposed to be chosen based on their strong suits or needs whereas the simple truth is that they need just a certain amount of personal experience and dedication.

Given my reputation of being a genius many assumed that I will be trying to pass multiple subjects with nothing short of an O+ in every one of them. I made my plans by first finding about the examiners that were supposed to come for the different subjects. Unlike everyone else who chose the subjects by their strengths I was certain to choose by the examiners. The reason was to make an impression on the then brilliant minds. That's why I took part in only 4 of the necessary exams.

The examinations went as per I thought, it was not too hard to have them amazed by making the transfigurations have inherent properties of fire added to them. They attributed it to my genius of the subject without knowing about my fire affinity. I had made sure to keep it to myself all these years as I was aware that this was not a commonly occuring phenomenon and I was sure to keep this trump card hidden.

After the results I had made my plans to leave behind the family and Britain itself and travel in disguise to gather both power and admirers who, after my return they will provide testimony of my brilliance and morals to the world to hear when they finally connect the subtle presence of me in one or other achievements that I had planned to achieve infront of the unassuming audiences. It was all mapped out and the advice by Nicholas was the other reason I had planned to have a partner along for these travels, to keep check of the mundane things that I would have otherwise neglected.

It just so happened that the tragedy struck on the eve before the start of our travels that made my plans to be scrapped and me to be stranded in the glorified hole known as my house. My siblings were both sub-par at best. Initially I had hopes for my sister as I could feel that she was awakening at a much faster rate than normal but then she lost control and the last thread of hope for my family was down the drain and since my gullible brother and mother were now busy to take care of her I completely focused my own goals. That was however to change when my mother was reported dead due to accidental magic from my sister.

My trip cancelled I was forced to return home as I was the next head and legally responsible for my siblings. As I had made plans to remain in light and achieve supreme power I couldn't have people think that I had abandoned my siblings in pursuit of my ambitions. This was the first true setback I had ever faced in my road for future and this made me a realise a fatal flaw in my education, a lack of failure, this hit me the hardest whether then or even in my future endeavours and I have always kept that in my mind ever since.

That also made me start on the path of subjects such as occlumency and legilimency. When I first confronted failure I became so distraught with frustration and the failure to contain my emotions that my dislike for for my position was clearly evident to the people living in the neighborhood. Initially I was not aware of the severity and thus couldn't control but then one day I met a boy who was visiting a relative in the village and as you can guess it was Grindelwald.