Annabeth has her third and final lesson with Dumbledore.

Chapter Rating: General Audiences

Content Warning: Cursing

Word Count: 4907

I have had a migraine for about ten days straight now. Pray for me, guys.

And all the characters are owned by J.K. Rowling, or Rick Riordan.

Neither Percy nor Nico appeared when Annabeth entered Dumbledore's office that night. She knew that was for the best, but she was still a little disappointed. She worried about Nico, who hadn't shown up all day, and she knew Percy was going out of his mind. Both they and Hestia had tried to get answers from Blaise, but he kept saying Nico didn't want anyone to know.

"Then why do you know?" Percy had demanded at dinner that evening.

"I just kinda... stumbled on it..." Blaise had mumbled, body shifting uncomfortably.

"You don't know Nico like we do." Annabeth had argued. "He dumps secrets on himself until he can't take it anymore and explodes or runs. You're not doing him any favors keeping it from us."

"It's not dangerous, it's not bad, and it's not anyone's business except for his. So lay off, Chase." Blaise had retorted. Then, he'd walked out of the Great Hall, most likely to check on Nico and get him to eat.

"Miss Chase?" Dumbledore asked.

Annabeth jumped, bringing her mind back to the present. "Sorry. Thinking about Nico--he's been acting weird."

"I'm aware Mr. di Angelo wasn't in any of his classes today," Dumbledore replied, eyebrows slightly raised.

"I don't know much about it. The only person who does is Blaise Zabini, but he won't tell me anything. I'm just worried about him; it looks like he hasn't eaten all day, or left the Slytherin house."

"Sometimes things are outside our control. To learn to let things take their course, especially with loved ones, is a hard, but necessary lesson. Do you believe Mr. di Angelo is in danger?"

"No."

"Do you believe he is a danger to any student at Hogwarts?"

"No."

"Then we shall say no more about it just now."

"But--" Annabeth stopped herself, knowing that, on some level, Dumbledore was right. "Nevermind." The word was hard for her to choke out.

"So, we meet this evening to continue the tale of Tom Riddle, whom we left last lesson poised on the threshold of his years at Hogwarts. You will remember how excited he was to hear that he was a wizard, that he refused my company on a trip to Diagon Alley, and that I, in turn, warned him against continued thievery when he arrived at school. Well, the start of the school year arrived and with it came Tom Riddle, a quiet boy in his secondhand robes, who lined up with the other first years to be sorted. He was placed in Slytherin House almost the moment that the Sorting Hat touched his head. How soon Riddle learned that the famous founder of the House could talk to snakes, I do not know--perhaps that very evening. The knowledge can only have excited him and increased his sense of self-importance. However, if he was frightening or impressing fellow Slytherins with displays of Parseltongue in their common room, no hint of it reached the staff. He showed no sign of outward arrogance or aggression at all. As an unusually talented and very good-looking orphan, he naturally drew attention and sympathy from the staff almost from the moment of his arrival. He seemed polite, quiet, and thirsty for knowledge. Nearly all were most favorably impressed by him."

"Didn't you tell them what he'd been like when you met him at the orphanage?"

"No, I did not. Though he had shown no hint of remorse, it was possible that he felt sorry for how he had behaved before and was resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. I chose to give him that chance."

Dumbledore paused and looked at Annabeth, at a loss for words. "But after what you saw, you couldn't just think he was... "

"Let us say that I did not take it for granted that he was trustworthy. I had, as I have already indicated, resolved to keep a close eye upon him, and so I did. I cannot pretend that I gleaned a great deal from my observations at first. He was very guarded with me. He felt, I am sure, that in the thrill of discovering his true identity he had told me a little too much. He was careful never to reveal as much again, but he could not take back what he had let slip in his excitement, nor what Mrs. Cole had confided in me. However, he had the sense never to try and charm me as he charmed so many of my colleagues. As he moved up the school, he gathered about him a group of dedicated friends; I call them that, for want of a better term, although as I have already indicated, Riddle undoubtedly felt no affection for any of them. This group had a kind of dark glamor within the castle. They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty. In other words, they were the forerunners of the Death Eaters, and, indeed, some of them became the first Death Eaters after leaving Hogwarts. Rigidly controlled by Riddle, they were never detected in open wrongdoing, although their seven years at Hogwarts were marked by a number of nasty incidents to which they were never satisfactorily linked, the most serious of which was, of course, the opening of the Chamber of Secrets, which resulted in the death of a girl.

"I have not been able to find many memories of Riddle at Hogwarts. Few who knew him then are prepared to talk about him, they are too terrified. What I know, I found out after he had left Hogwarts, after much painstaking effort, after tracing those few who could be tricked into speaking, after searching old records and questioning Muggle and wizard witnesses alike. Those whom I could persuade to talk told me that Riddle was obsessed with his parentage. This is understandable, of course; he had grown up in an orphanage and naturally wished to know how he came to be there. It seems that he searched in vain for some trace of Tom Riddle senior on the shields in the trophy room, on the lists of prefects in the old school records, even in the books of Wizarding history. Finally, he was forced to accept that his father had never set foot in Hogwarts. I believe that it was then that he dropped the name forever, assumed the identity of Lord Voldemort, and began his investigations into his previously despised mother's family--the woman whom, you will remember, he had thought could not be a witch if she had succumbed to the shameful human weakness of death.

"All he had to go upon was the single name 'Marvolo', which he knew from those who ran the orphanage had been his mother's father's name. Finally, after painstaking research through old books of Wizarding families, he discovered the existence of Slytherin's surviving line. In the summer of his sixteenth year, he left the orphanage to which he returned annually and set off to find his Gaunt relatives."

Dumbledore rose from behind his desk, a crystal bottle in his hand. Inside held the silver liquid she recognized as a memory. "And now, Miss Chase, if you will stand. I was very lucky to collect this, as you will understand when we have experienced it. Shall we?"

Annabeth plunged her head into the Pensieve, and fell through the familiar darkness. Her feet landed on a dirty stone floor, surroundings masked by almost total darkness. It took her a few seconds to recognize the place, in which time Dumbledore fell beside her.

"Professor... is this the Gaunts' house?"

The hovel looked dirtier than anywhere Annabeth had ever seen--and she'd been in Percy's bedroom before. The ceiling was thick with cobwebs, the floor a coat of dirt, food moldy on the table. A solitary speck of light came from a candle, sitting on the ground, off to one side of the room. Beside the candle, a middle-aged man sat in an armchair, sleeping with a wand in one hand and a knife in the other. His hair fell to his shoulders, so matted and filthy he resembled a hitchhiker. His clothes--ripped and coated with dirt--reminded Annabeth of the homeless men living on the side of San Francisco's main roads.

A loud knock at the door jerked the man awake. Startled, he held his wand and knife up to the doorway as it creaked open. Holding an old-fashioned lamp, the handsome, teenage Riddle entered. Eyes adjusting to the dark, Riddle surveyed his surroundings, landing on the man last. For a few seconds, they stared in silence. Then, the man stood. In a mad craze, he raised his weapons at Riddle, making his way towards the door.

"YOU!" He stumbled towards Riddle on unsteady feet. "YOU!"

Riddle held up his hand and hissed in Parseltongue. After the man had stopped coming after him with the knife, Riddle switched back to English. "Where is Marvolo?" he questioned, his face expressionless.

"Dead," the man replied. "Died years ago, didn't he?"

Riddle frowned. "Who are you, then?"

"I'm Morfin, ain't I?"

"Marvolo's son?"

" 'Course I am, then..." Morfin pushed the hair out of his dirty face, to try and get a better look at Riddle. The black ring, Marvolo's ring, shone on his middle finger in the candlelight. "I thought you was that Muggle. You look mighty like that Muggle."

Riddle narrowed his eyes. "What Muggle?"

"That Muggle what my sister took a fancy to, that Muggle who lives in the big house over the way." Morfin spat on the floor, disgusted. "You look right like him. Riddle. But he's older now, in 'e? He's older'n you, now I think on it..." Drunkenness overcame Morfin. He swayed a little, clutching the edge of the table for support. "He come back, see."

Riddle eyed Morfin, plotting. He inched closer to his uncle, his voice barely a whisper. "Riddle came back?"

"Ar, he left her, and serve her right, marrying filth!" Morfin spat again. "Robbed us, mind, before she ran off! Where's the locket, eh, where's Slytherin's locket?" Riddle didn't answer, despite Morfin's anger. He pointed his knife at his nephew, screaming, "Dishonored us, she did, that little slut! And who're you, coming here and asking questions about all that? It's over, innit... it's over..." He turned his back to Riddle, still clutching the table when darkness fell over the scene; both the candle and lamp faded into black oblivion....

Dumbledore grabbed Annabeth's arm, pulling her back to the Headmaster's office. The sudden light startled Annabeth's eyes, which had grown used to that impenetrable darkness. "Is that it?" she demanded. "Why did it go dark? What happened?"

"It went dark because Morfin could not remember anything from that point onward." Dumbledore moved back to his desk, so Annabeth did the same. "When he awoke next morning, he was lying on the floor, quite alone. Marvolo's ring had gone. Meanwhile, in the village of Little Hangleton, a maid was running along the High Street, screaming that there were three bodies lying in the drawing room of the big house: Tom Riddle Senior and his mother and father. The Muggle authorities were perplexed. As far as I am aware, they do not know to this day how the Riddles died, for the Avada Kedavra curse does not usually leave any sign of damage. The Ministry, on the other hand, knew at once that this was a wizard's murder. They also knew that a convicted Muggle-hater lived across the valley from the Riddle house, a Muggle-hater, who had already been imprisoned once for attacking one of the murdered people. So, the Ministry called upon Morfin."

"They did not need to question him, to use Veritaserum or Legilimency. He admitted to the murder on the spot, giving details only the murderer could know. He was proud, he said, to have killed the Muggles, had been awaiting his chance all these years. He handed over his wand, which was proved at once to have been used to kill the Riddles. And, he permitted himself to be led off to Azkaban without a fight. All that disturbed him was the fact that his father's ring had disappeared. 'He'll kill me for losing it,' he told his captors over and over again. 'He'll kill me for losing his ring.' And that, apparently, was all he ever said again. He lived out the remainder of his life in Azkaban, lamenting the loss of Marvolo's last heirloom, and is buried beside the prison, alongside the other poor souls who have expired within its walls."

Annabeth leaned forward. "So, you're implying that Riddle stole Morfin's wand? And used it to murder his father and grandparents?"

"Correct. We have no memories to show us this, but I think we can be fairly sure what happened. Voldemort Stupefied his uncle, took his wand, and proceeded across the valley to 'the big house over the way'. There, he murdered the Muggle man who had abandoned his witch mother, and, for good measure, his Muggle grandparents, thus obliterating the last of the unworthy Riddle line, and revenging himself upon the father who never wanted him. Then, he returned to the Gaunt hovel, performed the complex bit of magic that would implant a false memory in his uncle's mind, laid Morfin's wand beside its unconscious owner, pocketed the ancient ring he wore, and departed."

"And Morfin never realized he hadn't done it?"

"Never. He gave, as I say, a full and boastful confession."

"But, he had this real memory in him all the time! Why didn't your government--"

"It took a great deal of skilled Legilimency to coax it out of him. Why should anybody delve further into Morfin's mind when he had already confessed to the crime? However, I was able to secure a visit to Morfin in the last weeks of his life, by which time I was attempting to discover as much as I could about Voldemort's past. I extracted this memory with difficulty. When I saw what it contained, I attempted to use it to secure Morfin's release from Azkaban. Before the Ministry reached their decision, however, Morfin had died."

Annabeth felt dirty just hearing that. Riddle's plan was... it was smart, almost a plot her mother would be proud of, if it weren't so evil. Why did the gods give such brains to men like Tom Riddle? What good did that do for anyone?

Dumbledore gestured to another memory on his desk, interrupting Annabeth's musings. "Now, you will remember, I hope, that I told you at the very outset of these meetings of ours that we would be entering the realms of guesswork and speculation?"

"Yes."

"Thus far, as I hope you agree, I have shown you reasonably firm sources of fact for my deductions as to what Voldemort did until the age of seventeen?" Annabeth nodded. "But now, Miss Chase, now things become murkier and stranger. If it was difficult to find evidence about the boy Riddle, it has been almost impossible to find anyone prepared to reminisce about the man Voldemort. In fact, I doubt whether there is a soul alive, apart from himself, who could give us a full account of his life since he left Hogwarts. This last memory came from a very old house-elf by the name of Hokey. Before we see what Hokey witnessed, I must quickly recount how Lord Voldemort left Hogwarts. He reached the seventh year of his schooling with, as you might have expected, top grades in every examination he had taken. All around him, his classmates were deciding which jobs they were to pursue once they had left Hogwarts. Nearly everybody expected spectacular things from Tom Riddle, prefect, Head Boy, winner of the Award for Special Services to the School. I know that several teachers suggested that he join the Ministry of Magic, offered to set up appointments, put him in touch with useful contacts. He refused all offers. The next thing the staff knew, Voldemort was working at Borgin and Burkes."

"Where?" Annabeth didn't know that store, not by name, anyway. But, the way Dumbledore said it... it sounded like some retail place. Riddle had--at least, for some time--worked someplace like a Gap, ringing up items for soccer moms? And not murdered anyone? That didn't seem right.

"It's a most peculiar store, specializing in the sale of rare artifacts. I hope you recall a Mr. Burke buying Slytherin's locket off Merope? I think you will see what attractions the place held for him when we have entered Hokey's memory. But, this was not Voldemort's first choice of job. Hardly anyone knew of it at the time--I was one of the few in whom the then headmaster confided--but Voldemort first approached Professor Dippet, the previous Headmaster, and asked whether he could remain at Hogwarts as a teacher."

"He wanted to stay here? Why?" Retail was one thing, but now this lord of evil and murder wanted to babysit a bunch of eleven-year-olds?

"I believe he had several reasons, though he confided none of them to Professor Dippet. Firstly, and very importantly, Voldemort was, I believe, more attached to this school than he has ever been to a person. Hogwarts was where he had been happiest; the first and only place he had felt at home. Secondly, the castle is a stronghold of ancient magic. Undoubtedly, Voldemort had penetrated many more of its secrets than most of the students who pass through the place, but he may have felt that there were still mysteries to unravel, stores of magic to tap. And thirdly, as a teacher, he would have had great power and influence over young witches and wizards. I do not imagine for an instant that Voldemort envisaged spending the rest of his life at Hogwarts, but I do think that he saw it as a useful recruiting ground, and a place where he might begin to build himself an army."

"But, he didn't get the job."

"No, he did not. Professor Dippet told him that he was too young at eighteen, but invited him to reapply in a few years, if he still wished to teach. I felt deeply uneasy. I had advised Armando against the appointment--I did not give the reasons I have given you, for Professor Dippet was very fond of Voldemort and convinced of his honesty. But I did not want Lord Voldemort back at this school, and especially not in a position of power."

"Which job did he want? What subject?"

"Defense Against the Dark Arts. It was being taught at the time by an old Professor by the name of Galatea Merrythought, who had been at Hogwarts for nearly fifty years. So, Voldemort went off to Borgin and Burkes, and all the staff who had admired him said what a waste it was, a brilliant young wizard like that, working in a shop. However, Voldemort was no mere assistant. Polite and handsome and clever, he was soon given particular jobs of the type that only exist in a place like Borgin and Burkes. Voldemort was sent to persuade people to part with their treasures for sale by the partners, and he was, by all accounts, unusually gifted at doing this. And now, it is time to hear from Hokey the house-elf, who worked for a very old, very rich witch by the name of Hepzibah Smith."

Annabeth got to her feet. After Dumbledore had poured the memory in, she plunged her face into the Pensieve. Familiar darkness enveloped her, then dropped her off in an ornate sitting room. All around her, there were tables and shelves, full of trinkets that glittered in the light. With so many multicolored objects, it looked like a New York thrift shop. A fat old lady, wearing a ginger wig and flowy pink robes, stared at herself in a small, jeweled mirror. While she applied lipstick, a shriveled up, pointed ear--thing--adjusted satin slippers on her feet.

Clearly, Hepzibah had money.