บท 49: Harry Potter : Chapter 48: Cause II
The salutations that the wizard exchanged with the ancient creature were more recognition of each other's presence than an excuse to establish and confirm their places on the command ladder.
Much easier than the small-time politicking implicit in the 'Hellos' I have to exchange with the others, if nothing else.
...
Now that he thought about it, that mechanic was remarkably similar to how Hagrid held himself around others: even with the professors, the pretense of obedience was paper-thin.
Not that he'd ignore their instructions, but it was clear to Riddle that the option of doing as he pleased was always present in Rubeus' mind, he choose to pretend to be just another student, and the teachers were too blind to notice, too used to the image they were offered by all the students, nevermind that his unnaturally tall companion was blatantly different.
Oh, Dumbledore probably knew, but he had divined enough of Rubeus' character to not poke at the incongruence, and Slughorn earned too much by letting Hagrid act with such a long leash.
Almost mirroring his younger 'friend', Riddle often twisted the surface of his behavior to cater to the expectations of so many of his schoolmates.
He had learned early that not fitting the boxes that others instinctively put you in only brought pain in some form or another, and while he would have certainly delighted in picking apart the ever-pretentious purebloods that lorded their birth above him like it was an accomplishment worthy of his praise.
He would have loved tricking those fools into betraying everything they stood for merely for the delicious irony that that picture would represent.
But since Dumbledore's visit to the orphanage, Tom had realized that his usual and effective methods that showcased his vast superiority -built on the tears of the lesser beings that dared intrude upon him- couldn't be used.
And as he often had to, Riddle had adapted in order to be in charge without making it obvious to any observer, he had acted so that he'd be the one the other students would turn to, pureblood or not.
Of course, his natural brilliance with magic had helped where his official status as a mudblood had hindered him. Oh, if only they knew.
"Greetings." the somewhat unnatural sound left Tom's lips by virtue of the magic in his blood, and the Basilisk's poisonous yellow eyes flashed innocently -and harmlessly- in his direction before the creature started to curl on itself, "Did you hunt well?"
The following hiss sounded almost amused, carrying with it undertones that briefly escaped the human's understanding: but it could be summed up as a disdainful sniff. After all, the Basilisk was the most dangerous creature on the planet, never mind the Forbidden Forest that the King of Snakes could reach through the Black Lake and a river that ran deep under the boughs.
Still, Riddle felt an echoing pride ring inside of himself: he'd have to keep this secret, of course, the Basilisk had to be kept under wraps as it was meant to defend the castle, and gods knew what Hagrid would try to do with access to the creature, nevermind the entirety of the Wizarding World.
No, very much like Riddle had decided to keep the Rùnda only for himself, Minerva, and Rubeus, he'd now hold the creature's existence only for himself.
Revealing himself as the last of Salazar's line would make even those purebloods that still resisted his charm and skills fall to their knees in a matter of seconds, but that would mean giving undeniable proof of his might, not only as a Parselmouth, but also as Slytherin's Heir.
He even had some form of plan murmuring in the back of his head, after all, the Basilisk could easily be directed towards a single student if Tom framed them as a threat to Hogwarts, and arguably mudbloods threatened constantly the Statute.
A part of Tom even reflected upon the merits of having the Basilisk kill Hagrid.
It wasn't that the younger Slytherin student was no longer useful, far from that: simply, his apparently neverending winning streak when it came to anything that wasn't perfectly framed in schoolwork somewhat irked at Tom's sense of worth.
Wasn't he the best student in the school? Wasn't he the Heir of Slytherin? How could Rubeus dare to shine so brightly?
A memory of wooden doors being turned in a single uninterrupted chain of transfigurations that defied belief stopped that particular sequence of thoughts, and Tom forced himself to take a deep breath.
While he had known about Minerva's skill in Transfiguration before Rubeus's intervention back in his first year, that she had proved herself capable of so much was just... unreasonable. How did Hagrid know that she'd be so... worthy?
For all of Tom's disregard for the mediocre and the pampered, there was no denying that bringing the lackluster -in his opinion at least- Minerva in the group that had created the Rùnda had been an extraordinarily lucky guess.
She took a while to prove herself, and she could hardly keep up in the many different fields that Riddle and Hagrid sparred across, but she entered their little game of the Black King with a magnificent first move.
That too, irked at Riddle's sense of worth, if only minutely.
He hadn't dared to bring up Minerva's worth with Hagrid, not after his uncommon display at Slughorn's afterparty.
A part of the unnaturally tall Slytherin would have attempted to milk her 'introduction' to Tom for all of its worth, while the rest of him would have simply crooned about his -still unproved- ability to discern those that were truly cut from a different cloth.
McGonagall had hardly been someone that could catch Riddle's attention when thinking about magic, and the past years had hardly challenged that suspicion: yet, out of nowhere, she turned wooden double doors in an artwork that defied expectation, nevermind understanding.
All that Tom knew of transfiguration told him that the bespelled doors should be so unstable that each change was an instant away from cascading into the next.
All that Tom knew about potions implied the need for magical ingredients to obtain anything that couldn't be explained by a muggle.
Riddle itched to let go of the pretenses, to unleash the Basilisk, and to be done with the doubts that some people still nurtured about his position in the world.
One last hiss left Tom's lips as he moved out of the Chamber, knowing that the Basilisk would heed his commands of not revealing herself to humans: he felt almost giddy at having her in his service, but he wouldn't put his position at risk by ordering her to attack, not when there was no reason to. Not yet.
...
I slowly stretched back in the suitably enlarged armchair that I had placed next to a lit fireplace, feeling the strain in the muscles of my back as I took a deep breath.
After a moment, my hands started to organize the stack of papers that I had filled with notes and observations, scattering them over a nearby desk in a parody of order that nevertheless allowed me to keep an eye on the few realizations I had at the same time: it was not unlike having more than one monitor open next to another, showing similar but distinct topics.
In particular, the main focus of those notes was intertwined research on Divination and Arithmancy: I chose those two subjects both because I knew that actual prophecy was a thing and because I already received proof that some numbers could be important, and I wasn't referring only to my metaknowledge.
The three books Secrets of the Darkest Arts, Magic Most Evile, and The Theory of Rituals.
The Magick of Sacrifice that I had stolen from the Restricted Section during my first year and that had led me to the ritual that actually sacrificed a human being -I swallowed a familiar lump of guilt and disgust at the memory of roots sprouting from the skin of my 'father'- had more or less confirmed, along with my instinctive understanding of potions, that some numbers had an effect, and an important one at that.
The first lessons in Arithmancy had been dedicated to the importance of some numbers, without actually giving a context that explained why those numbers were relevant.
Three for stability, Seven for power, Thirteen for focus (as it was a direct sum between 6 and 7, providing the stability of two threes and the might of one seven), and so on.
Slowly, I rose from my seat and distractedly touched my holly and phoenix wand, enjoying the reassuring warmth that rushed along my arm while my eyes kept scanning the result of my reasonings and mad scrambles for the set of rules that defined a particular branch of magic.
Giving a glance to the syllabus told me that there would be formulae and calculations in the second half of the academic year: basically, I was going to learn a wholly skewed mathematical system, and I had no idea about the why.
The best I could say with certainty at the moment was that in the same way the Golden Ration appeared everywhere in nature, some numbers were significant in a magical context. Of course, I hadn't needed to understand the true importance of the number Three back when I had performed that successful ritual.
And that was what made Arithmancy so extraordinary: in potions, the meaning of each ingredient was enhanced by the understanding of the brewer, I had proved that to great effect with both my experiments and the outrageous quality of my standard brews.
But the numbers had a power that was inherent, and that lent itself to everything that had them present.
"Maybe it's better to see Arythmancy as a whole as Applied Numerology." I muttered to myself as I scratched my cheek.
"The meaning of numbers, which is inherent, can be leveraged in different ways."
...
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