54,838A/N: This will be the last regular update for a while. Major life issues are getting in the way. I am very sorry, and I hope to be able to post again regularly soon, but I would much rather *not* post chapters for a while than post half-plotted incomplete poorly written ones. :/
With his success at the second Task, Harry found his popularity surging higher than ever. Harry, who was used to being whispered about because of who he was, not because of what he had done, found himself very confused by this.
"Girls sit next to me in class and look at me, all soppy-like," Harry told Hermione one day in Ancient Runes, baffled. "They ask me about the Second Task, but I've already told them all the story a hundred times. And then they sigh – in this dreamy, silly way, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do."
"People are attracted to confidence and power," Hermione told him, amused. "You showed both of those in the Second Task, and also in the first."
"Yeah, but we planned all that as a group," Harry dismissed. "It wasn't just me."
"You were the one who did it and embodied it," Hermione pointed out. She smirked at him. "Why? Is it a problem that girls are fancying you now?" she teased. "Would you rather they not?"
"No, no," Harry said hastily, laughing. "It's just—it's different, is what it is. It's weird."
"Might as well make the most of it," Hermione advised him. "Ask out whatever girl you fancy now, while your stock is high."
Harry looked thoughtful, and Hermione wondered just who he was thinking about before Professor Babbling came in, finally starting class.
Tom Riddle was very amused by Harry's confusion regarding girls.
"Does he need seduction lessons next?" he teased Hermione. He smirked. "I'll make sure he doesn't learn more than I've taught you."
"Oh, hush." Hermione rolled her eyes, already regretting telling Tom that detail. "There are more important things to discuss."
"Like what?" Tom asked, raising an eyebrow. "Your little Moses trick?"
"No," Hermione said curtly. "Dark Marks."
Voldemort whirled around from where he'd been entertaining himself stacking small pebbles in Hermione's mindscape, red eyes wide.
"Dark Marks?" he said, perking up.
Hermione fought the urge to compare the Dark Lord Voldemort to an eager puppy as she struggled to respond in an even tone. "Yes. Want to come discuss it?"
Once both Tom and Voldemort were seated, Hermione explained what she had seen on the newcomer woman's arm and the story Eve had told her about mixing her magic with it. Both Tom and Voldemort looked fascinated by this.
"This makes significantly more sense than just branding everyone with the same mark," Tom said. "Customized ones that can pass as tattoos in the muggle world but still work as beacons—"
"The Dark Mark wasn't actually intended for communication, you buffoon," Voldemort informed him. "It was so they couldn't turn on me or betray me. If they did, they'd be caught out as a Death Eater."
"You had the Ministry believing that if a Death Eater tried to betray you, they'd be eaten alive by Dark magic," Hermione told him. She paused. "They might still think that, actually."
Voldemort looked unreasonably pleased. "That's even better. Did the Death Eaters believe it too?"
"Can we please stay on topic?" Tom said testily. "If that was the original plan, when did the plan change? Why did it change?"
Voldemort considered.
"Did this woman say when she joined the Death Eaters?" he asked.
"She did not," Hermione said, and Voldemort frowned.
"My Knights of Walpurgis will have gotten the original mark," he said. "Unquestionably, my old loyal school mates will have gotten the original design. I must have changed my mind somewhere along the way." He paused. "How long was my reign?"
Hermione ignored his choice of wording. "The first Wizarding War lasted for eleven years – 1970 to 1981."
"That's a long time," Tom said, surprised. He looked at Hermione. "Why so long?"
Hermione shrugged helplessly.
"I've only read history books," she admitted. "Not military strategy ones."
"Well, that's the issue, isn't it?" Voldemort said reasonably. He looked at them with his beady red eyes. "It's not exactly military strategy, is it?"
Hermione blinked. "What do you mean?"
Voldemort grinned. It was a distinctly disturbing expression on his waxy, blurred face.
"A Wizarding War," he said, "should not be fought like a World War."
And he proceeded to elaborate:
The Ministry of Magic was accustomed to fighting opponents in a style not unlike traditional muggle warfare – lines of Aurors and Hit Wizards defending and pushing forward to gain land. It was in this manner they often battled the goblins and even the giants when they needed to be pushed back into the mountains again. This worked well against their chosen opponents – magical creatures, who, though they had some powers, were not quite as capable as a full adult wizard.
This, Voldemort pointed out, had been the Ministry's oversight.
A fully adult wizard had no need to stay in a regimented line to fight. A wizard could appear from nowhere, fire off a dozen curses, and disappear before anyone had time to react. Wizarding war had no need to follow the conventional rules of warfare, and to think within those limits was foolish.
"Grindelwald followed in the wake of Hitler's march," he said. "He took advantage of the chaos and disorder to swoop in and claim a magical community's allegiance in exchange for protection. He perpetuated some terrorist attacks, but his spread largely followed that of Nazi Germany."
"And you learned from his defeat?" Tom asked, interested despite himself.
"No." Voldemort smiled nastily. "I learned from Vietnam."
The Vietnam War, Voldemort told Tom, was a spectacular debacle that the United States had gotten themselves into as a proxy war against the communist Soviet Union through the Viet Cong. Despite the United States' apparent superior military power, which included strategic bombing campaigns, artillery, airstrikes, and full-out search and destroy ground operations, the Viet Cong were somehow able to resist through their use of guerilla warfare.
"They didn't limit themselves like a military," Voldemort told them. "They knew the jungle and the terrain, and they used it to their advantage. They launched surprise attacks and then immediately disappeared back into the trees. They raided soldier camps in the dead of night, then ambushed them at dawn when they could catch the soldiers with their pants off. They used hit-and-run tactics to great effect. They were unpredictable, and through their unpredictability, they won."
"And you were going to fight in this style?" Tom asked. "Hide in the metaphorical jungle and launch surprise attacks?"
"Why not?" Voldemort's smile was cruel. "If the goal is to sew fear and paranoia, what better way to go about it?"
Though Hermione didn't know much about the Vietnam War (other than it was a thing, it was bad, and there had been horrible ecological consequences), she did know about the wizarding war.
"You recruited the giants and werewolves first," she told Voldemort. "I think that was the first move, and I think they started sewing fear and terror while you started recruiting followers."
Voldemort looked inordinately pleased.
"That was exactly my plan," he said. "I'm glad the rest of me had the sense to carry that out."
Tom snorted. "And how long did that last?"
"The war was eleven years," Hermione said. "They call it a war, but it was more a gradually-intensifying period of distrust and terror. The Aurors were going after Death Eaters in force. People were vanishing, families going missing, sudden reports of violence and finding the Dark Mark over rubble, but there wasn't much wand-to-wand combat, from what I understand." She paused. "At least, not from the Ministry. I think Dumbledore's counter-group might have tried to fight the Death Eaters toe-to-toe."
"Guerrilla warfare," Voldemort said, nodding. "If your forces are hidden among the civilians, how can they ever be rooted out?"
Tom sighed loudly, very over-dramatic.
"I thought I was going to gain political power," he complained. "Not seize it through military action."
Voldemort sniffed.
"It would have taken too long and never worked," he dismissed. "Besides, I wanted to study magic in greater depth. I would never have been able to do that and accomplish a slow rise to power through a political career."
"So you studied military strategy and warfare during your travels? As well as human biology and anatomy?" Hermione said, glancing at Voldemort for confirmation.
"Wouldn't you?" Voldemort shot back pointedly. "Read The Art of War, and tell me that you'll never use what you learn from that book in your own rise to power."
"I wasn't saying it was a bad thing!" Hermione said hastily. "I was just asking. I have no idea what you did during the years you vanished before the war. Nobody does except you."
"Oh." Voldemort looked mollified. "I mostly explored the limits of magic and experimented with different Dark magics. I developed new curses, new rituals, magical theories, practiced my own skills. But doing one thing all the time can get boring, you know. I always liked learning, so I explored other fields along the way."
Tom was nodding along, and Hermione bit her lip, looking from Tom to Voldemort to Tom to Voldemort again.
"You know," she said conversationally, "it's easy to forget how brilliant you were when you look like that. I know Tom is studious and brilliant and a genius, but you? When you look like that—"
Voldemort grinned maliciously, his red eyes gleaming.
"It is always a good thing for your enemy to underestimate you," he purred. "If they think me a senseless monster, all the better to spread fear."
"What, you chose to look like that on purpose?" Tom scoffed. "I doubt it."
Voldemort hesitated.
"No," he said finally. "This just… sort of… happened. Along the path to immortality."
"How many horcruxes in were you before you noticed significant changes?" Hermione asked, curious.
"Three," Voldemort said immediately. "The first two were small changes – my eyes, my voice. But after the third, it began to affect my skin, and I knew I had to disappear from public life. The fourth was shortly after the third, which changed my facial features, and at that point, I was so far down the path I knew there was no use trying to turn around."
Tom's eyes narrowed.
"You're what, the fifth one?" he asked.
"I am," Voldemort said.
"Then what changed on the other half of you after you were split off?" Tom asked.
Voldemort frowned.
"I'm not sure," he said. "How would I know?"
"I don't suppose you would," Hermione said, considering. "You said the first thing to go were your eyes, and Tom's eyes aren't red like yours."
"They just flashed red at first," Voldemort reflected. "I'm not sure when it became permanent."
"The rest of you doesn't even have a body at this point," Tom pointed out. "What does it ultimately matter?"
Hermione gave him a look.
"If Voldemort is trying to return, which he is," she said testily, "I want to know as much as possible about what I'm up against. That includes if his mind was starting to unhinge and make him go after babies to kill."
"It shouldn't have," Voldemort said. "Unless someone destroyed a horcrux, I should have been as sane as ever."
"He was just following the prophecy," Tom said, raising an eyebrow.
"You're saying he really just went after Harry because of that prophecy?" Hermione repeated, rolling her eyes.
"You're following a prophecy yourself, you know," Tom said pointedly. He scoffed. "More than one, actually – you've been letting your anxiety control you all year from the words of an unknown mystic."
Hermione felt as though she'd been struck, and she folded in on herself, hugging her knees to her chest. It was true – she couldn't fault Voldemort for trying to react to a prophecy, really, not when she had so many about herself.