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Chapter Text

The wizarding world had celebrated Voldemort's defeat as the dawn of a new beginning. For a brief moment, Harry had truly believed that everything could change. Illuminated streets, golden banners, and hopeful smiles. But the enthusiasm had quickly evaporated, giving way to something colder, slimier, more subtle than the open terror of war.

The Ministry of Magic had never truly fallen: it had simply changed face. The new administration, though without dark marks or serpents, repeated the same reasoning, the same arrogance, the same venom.
And Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, was now little more than a mascot for a government that wanted not change, but control.

Harry sat every day in an office he hadn't requested, filling out paperwork no one actually read. A job that was empty, powerless, and voiceless.
Hermione, despite fighting for a role where she thought she could make a difference, had been relegated to the Department of Magical Regulation—a space buried in paperwork, slow-moving committees, and deliberately interminable processes. The Ministry was happy to show them off in public, to display them as proud symbols, but they wouldn't listen to a single word that came out of their mouths.

Until that afternoon.

Hermione, returning to her office later than usual, heard two voices coming from the next conference room. One was the Minister's: pompous, lucid, self-assured. The other was his secretary.

“Potter is still too beloved,” the Minister said, with a calmness that chilled Hermione more than the Death Cloak. “People listen to him. They follow him. And if he starts talking… really talking… we could have a problem.”

A brief silence. Then, the sentence that made her hands tremble.

"We have to find a way to shut it down. Not kill it, obviously... but reduce it. Diminish it. Make people forget about it. Turn it into a mistake, a self-defeating hero."

Hermione held her breath, suspended between fear and horror.

It was no longer a political game.
It was no longer just bureaucratic slowness.
It was a plan.

A plan against Harry.

A new war had begun. A silent, invisible one, more dangerous than all the others.

Hermione had rushed to him as soon as she left the building, her heart pounding as if after a miscast spell. It didn't take much to convince him to return to Grimmauld Place—the house he'd tried for years to forget, and which now seemed to be the only place where he could vent the fury he felt building in his chest.

As Harry crossed the threshold, the familiar air hit him with an unexpected weight. The dark walls, the scent of dust and old spells, the faded photograph of Sirius laughing for a moment before disappearing from the picture.
Harry stood still, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

All this.
Everything that had been fought for, lost, sacrificed.

And for what?

"They want to make me disappear," he whispered, more to himself than to her. "Not with a curse... but slowly. As if I were... a mistake that needs erasing."
He felt a burning sensation in his eyes and stifled it with anger. The boy who survived couldn't afford to break down. Not anymore.

Hermione stood by the door for a moment, watching him. When she approached, her voice was low, cracked with fatigue.

"We knew, deep down, it wouldn't be easy. We thought... the worst was over."

Harry burst into a bitter laugh. "The worst is never over, Hermione. Did you notice? The only ones who really fought... they're gone."
He looked around, as if the ghosts might respond. "Sirius. Remus. Tonks. Fred. Everyone. And now the Ministry wants... wants to rewrite history. Make me less than nothing."

Hermione sat down next to him on the worn old sofa, her fingers intertwined nervously. "I can't believe we're here. After the battle, I thought we'd build something new. Instead..."
She closed her eyes for a moment. "Ginny ran away to France because she couldn't stand seeing you like this. She found a team there, and at least someone treated her like an athlete, not the Chosen One's girlfriend."

Harry looked down. "I can't blame her."

"Ron..." she continued, a lump in her throat. "Ron couldn't handle the pressure. Every time he tried to talk about politics, about change, they laughed at him. In the end, he gave up everything. He's in Romania with Charlie. He says at least dragons don't lie."

Harry closed his eyes. A part of him knew Ron wouldn't come back.

"Neville and Luna..." he murmured. "The only ones left, in a way."

"Neville teaches at Hogwarts and doesn't want to get involved with the Ministry. He believes the next generation is the only hope. Luna travels and writes. But..."
Hermione hesitated. "But they know it too. None of us are welcome in the heart of power anymore. It's as if wizarding England doesn't really want to change. As if we fought for nothing."

Harry buried his face in his hands, his voice a whisper.

"So who won, Hermione? If not us… who?"

A heavy silence filled the room. Hermione looked at him, and in her eyes shone something that was no longer anger, but a dark, deep fear.

"Perhaps," she said in a trembling voice, "the war isn't over. Perhaps it's just... changed form."

And both, without saying it, understood the same truth: what they had defeated was not a man.
It was an idea.
And that idea was still alive.

The question hung between them, like an unspoken, yet present, heavy spell.

What if, after all, magical London had always been in agreement with Voldemort?

Not with his methods… not openly.
But with the idea.
The purity of blood. Control. Suspicion of anything different.
Voldemort had not been born in a vacuum: he had been the product of a society that had raised him and, ultimately, protected him.

Hermione was the first to say what they were both thinking.

"Maybe we didn't defeat Voldemort. We only defeated his body. His mind... his ideas... were already here."

Harry didn't answer right away. He knew it was true. He'd seen it in the wizards' eyes, in the veiled fear when they spoke of "new horizons" or "change magic."
He had felt it every time he put down his wand and understood that the people didn't want him as a leader: they wanted him as a silent symbol.

And in a dark, twisted way, he felt it inside him better than anyone else.
It had been a Horcrux.
He had carried in his mind the memories, the impulses, the traces of that man.
The deepest proximity to darkness was not a medal: it was a condemnation.

"Hermione..." he said slowly, with an almost disturbing calm. "I understand Voldemort more than anyone would like to admit. I've seen the world through his eyes. I've felt his contempt, his logic. And the worst part..." He breathed. "...is that the wizarding world shares it."

Hermione looked at him, and there was fear in her eyes. Not of him—but for him.

The next day, quietly, without explanation, Harry left his job. The Ministry pretended to approve, with forced smiles and press releases that spoke of "new collaboration opportunities," but both knew what it meant.
It was a cut. Clean, silent. A planned erasure.

Harry Potter no longer worked for the Ministry of Magic.

And then he decided to do the one thing that no one expected.

Don't fight the present.
But understand the past.

He began collecting material on Tom Riddle. Not Voldemort, not the Dark Lord, not the symbol.
Tom Riddle, the boy.
The student.
The son of two worlds.
The wound opened before the war.

The Hogwarts archives, the old letters of deceased professors, testimonies buried in the memories of surviving teachers. It was like reconstructing a spell shattered into a thousand pieces: every detail was a trace, every shadow a clue.

Hermione watched him, worried and curious. "Why are you digging into this?"

Harry didn't hesitate.

"Because if the wizarding world wants to be like him… I need to understand where it all began. Voldemort wasn't born a monster. He was built."

A break.

"And if I understand them… I can destroy them. This time, for real."

And it was then that a new suspicion arose between them:
Maybe the way to save the wizarding world wasn't to fight Voldemort.
It was to expose those who had allowed it.

So Harry had begun to understand. Tom Riddle hadn't been born a monster: he'd been born a child, in a gray London orphanage, among peeling walls, cold corridors, and staff who couldn't—or wouldn't—understand what was before them. He'd discovered that, every year, Tom asked to leave Wool, to be fostered, to have a home. And every year, without fail, he was sent back.

The Ministry, at the time, had ignored all the requests. Out of "prudence." Out of "protocol." Or, more likely, out of fear of his magic.

One afternoon, Harry and Hermione had arrived at what remained of Wool. It was little more than a wreck of blackened bricks, swallowed by ivy and the years. Broken glass, propped up doors, empty rooms where the echoes seemed to still hold the voices of forgotten children. In a dusty archive of the public library, they had found very old items: yellowed registers and photographs, and then a disturbing series of reports.

Wool, it turned out, had been attacked several times during the Second World War. Not just by Muggles, not just by German raids: there were signs of magical arsons, infiltration, and veiled threats. The orphanage's protection had been ignored by both the Muggle and wizarding worlds. Vulnerable children had been caught in the crossfire. No one had paid for it.

Hermione, reading the notes, had whispered, “They were looking for someone.”
Harry had replied, his voice cold: “Or they were trying to destroy him before he became someone.”

She followed him step by step, not just for the evidence, but because she understood. She understood that Harry needed to face that dark side he had always feared: the side that tied him to Voldemort, the side the world kept reminding him of.

But Harry was no longer a boy.
He was no longer impulsive, nor scared.
He was a grown man, with a sharp mind and a character tempered by war and loss. The scars hadn't weakened him: they had made him immovable.

He was not manipulable.
He wasn't intimidating.
And most of all, he was no longer willing to be silenced.

People forgot that Harry Potter hadn't survived the Dark Lord twice because he was lucky.
Harry carried within him a power that no one at the Ministry wanted to name: a power born of experience, of an understanding of darkness, and, most of all, of the ability to recognize evil when it was masked by bureaucracy and politeness.

As they left Wool, Hermione watched him as he stared at the ruin for the last time.

"Do you understand, Hermione?" he said, his voice low but firm. "Tom didn't become Voldemort just because he was cruel. He became Voldemort because the world taught him that no one would ever defend him. No one would ever welcome him."

Hermione nodded, a pain tugging at her eyes.
“And now that world is turning into exactly what he wanted.”

Harry clenched his jaw.
"No. Not this time. I won't let it happen again."

His decision was neither shouted nor spectacular.
She was silent. Solid.
The decision of a man who no longer fought for glory, or for prophecy — but for justice.

Such power did not need to scream.
He demanded respect.

The power Harry carried within him had no name. No one had ever given it to him, and he had never asked for it. Not because he didn't know it, but because he feared that speaking it would make it real.
He was the Master of Death.
Not by title, not by ambition: by right.

Death wasn't an abstract concept. It never had been, not for him.
He had followed him on the battlefield, in the sleepless nights after the war, and now in the silences of adult life.
At first they were only fleeting shadows: a barely audible whisper, a shiver of icy air, a shadow longer than the body that cast it.

Then came the dreams.

That night, Harry found himself in a vaulted room. The walls were made of iron and rune, a blend of ancient and harsh magic. Oil lamps burned flamelessly, and everything was enveloped in absolute silence, a silence that did not belong to the living.

A man was there.

Elegant, tall, with a haunting charm and an unmistakable presence. He wore impeccable black robes, more modern than the centuries from which he seemed to hail. He was bent over a series of objects placed on a table: a dark cloak, pristine as if time were bending so as not to touch it; a black stone set in a ring; a wand that was not wood, nor bone, nor magic, but all of these things at once.

Harry recognized everything.
He knew that aura, he knew the weight of those three objects.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, and his voice didn’t tremble, even though it should have.

The man straightened up, slowly, as if he knew that his every movement had a precise meaning.
When he spoke, his voice was caressing and terrible at the same time.

“I'm sorting out some properties.”
He turned and looked at him with eyes as dark as the night beyond the night. "This is the Peverell vault."

Harry felt his blood stop for a moment.

"It belongs to you. By right."

The words fell like a seal.

Harry looked around: the cloak, the stone, the wand. They weren't replicas. They weren't visions. They were real. And he understood. This wasn't an ordinary dream.

“Who are you?” he asked, even though a part of his spirit, the one that knew nightmares and prophecies, already knew.

The man smiled. Not a friendly smile. An ancient, knowing smile.
"Oh, Harry. You know me well. Perhaps better than any wizard in the last thousand years."

He took a step forward. The lights dimmed, but it wasn't shadow: it was the absence of everything else.

Harry felt a chill run down his spine, like river water in the dead of winter.

"You are…"
The word came out without air.

The man inclined his head slightly, pleased.

“Death.”

Not a symbol.
Not a fairy tale.
Not the figure with the cloak and the scythe.

It was Death as the greatest minds would have perceived it: pure power, perfect balance, a presence that did not judge, did not promise, did not threaten.

Death looked at him with respect.

"You took me with you on the field, boy. You called my name at Hogwarts. You walked with me through the Forbidden Forest. And I returned you to the world, when I could have held you back."

Harry swallowed, but didn't back away.

"Why now? Why show yourself?"

Death looked at him as one looked at a young king who had not yet put on his crown.
"Because someone is trying to steal what's yours. Not your fame. Not your name. But your role. Your legacy."

Harry gritted his teeth. "The Ministry."

"The Ministry thinks it can control history. But history isn't made of words."
Death raised his wand—the Elder Wand—and the metal of the walls trembled, as if it recognized its master.

“It is made up of those who are willing to die to change the world.”

Harry inhaled slowly. "And you're here to help me?"

Death smiled again, with a hint of irony.

"I don't help. I observe. I collect."
He touched his shoulder—or maybe it was just the sensation of a cold hand. "But you, Harry Potter, are the only mortal who chose me and came back. You are my master not because I serve you, but because you have understood that I am inevitable."

Silence.
And then:

“The question is: what will you do with me?”

Harry opened his mouth, but the world dissolved. The vault vanished, the man with it, the objects, the voice.

He woke abruptly, sitting up in bed, his heart not in panic, but perfectly clear. The room at Grimmauld Place was plunged into darkness.
On the bedside table, next to the wand, the air shimmered, almost expectantly.

Death had not threatened him.
He hadn't called him.
It had reminded him of a simple and terrible fact:

Harry was no longer a symbol.
He was not a retired hero.

He was the Master of Death.

And whoever wanted to destroy it would find out what it really meant.

The next morning, with the first light barely filtering through the heavy curtains of Grimmauld Place, Harry found Hermione already awake at the kitchen table. He could tell she hadn't slept much: the deep bags under her eyes, the cold cup of tea, and that expression that showed not fear... but awareness.

Harry sat down across from her and told her everything. Every detail. The man. The objects. The vault. The voice.

When he finished, Hermione didn't speak for several minutes. She looked at the table, her gaze focused and lucid, as if she were piecing together formulas no book had ever written.
Then he looked up.

"It's not just a dream, Harry. Death doesn't speak to you like a symbol. He speaks to you because he can."
She inclined her head slightly. "And because He wants to be used."

Harry remained silent. He had never wanted to believe that part of the prophecy, that part of his story. He had always avoided that power, as if acknowledging it might transform him into something dark. But Hermione didn't back down.

"You are the Master of Death. Not by choice, but by destiny. And a destiny like yours is not meant to remain in the shadows."
Her voice wasn't excited, nor scared. It was clear. "Harry, you don't have to be a symbol... you have to be a force."

He looked at her, and understood that Hermione wasn't pushing him toward darkness, but toward the truth. And the truth was simple: if Death itself had moved, then something enormous was already moving in the world.

A few hours later, they crossed the great marble hall of Gringotts. The bank was cold and silent, as always. The goblins stared at them with ancient suspicion, but not surprise. Harry Potter was no longer a customer: he was a name that carried weight.

As he approached the person in charge of the Legacy Vaults, Harry spoke calmly:

"I wish to gain access to the Peverell family vaults. By right of blood."

The words fell like a key in the right lock. The goblins didn't comment, didn't raise any objections. They simply exchanged glances, as if they'd been waiting for this moment for a very long time. The goblin leader took out a silver needle and a small black crystal.

“Two drops.”

Harry didn't hesitate. The blood touched the crystal, which lit up with a deep glow, not red... but white.
The goblins stiffened. One of them muttered something in their language, and Harry caught only one word: legitimate.

They were led underground. Not along the usual tracks, not through damp caves and carved tunnels.
At one point the carriage stopped in front of an immense, pale silver door, covered in ancient runes that neither Harry nor Hermione recognized.

“Vault 0,” the goblin leader rasped. “The Peverell Vault.”

The door opened without anyone touching it.

And when Harry crossed the threshold, he saw something that took his breath away.

It was the same room as his dream.

The cloak, spread out as if time did not exist.
The Gaunt ring, but without the curse, the black stone still and shining.
And on the pedestal in the center of the room… the Elder Wand.

Hermione was speechless. Harry wasn't sure how they'd ended up there; after the war, he'd hidden the gifts inside a trunk at Grimmauld Place.

The goblins bowed—not deeply, not slavishly, but with the respect reserved for something ancient and non-negotiable.

Harry felt a shiver run down his spine. It wasn't fear.

It was recognition.

The man's voice in the dream came back like an echo:

It belongs to you. By right.

Hermione whispered, almost afraid to break the air:

“Harry… Death has opened the way for you.”

He moved forward.
Every step was silence.
Every breath was destiny taking shape.

When his hand closed around the Elder Wand, there was no explosion, no blinding light.

Only an absolute, intense, sacred silence.

Harry Potter was no longer just the Boy Who Lived.

It was the one whom Death had recognized.

And the wizarding world was about to find out.

As Harry and Hermione exited the Vault, the door slammed shut behind them with a heavy clang, like a final sentence. Harry turned, expecting to find the stone corridors and train tracks of Gringotts again.
It wasn't like that.

The floor was shiny and new. The brass chandeliers shone without the patina of time. There was no damp, nor that sense of decay that had permeated the bank since 1998.

Hermione stiffened. "Harry… look."

The walls of the great central hall were immaculate, crowded with wizards and witches dressed in robes that looked like they had stepped out of yellowed photographs. The goblins wore gleaming armor, and the central statue—the one depicting the pact with the wizards—was different, smaller, not yet tainted by history.

Harry turned to the goblin leader, his voice cold and steady. “Where are we?”

The Goblin looked at him without the slightest surprise. "Exactly where the Hallows intended you to be, Lord Peverell."

That word cut the air like a blade.

Lord.

Hermione's eyes widened. "What... what do you mean?"

The Goblin handed them both two parchments sealed with black wax, engraved with a triangular symbol they knew all too well: the circle, the line, the cloak.
On the seal it was written:

Hadrian Peverell
Hermione Peverell
Last of the Lineage

Hermione trembled. "Peverell? But we—"

"You are what Death has chosen you to be," replied the Goblin. "The Hallows don't just transport you across places. They transport you across ages. Every Master of Death comes where he is meant to be, when he is meant to be."

Hermione, incredibly, smiled. Not a smile of frivolity: one of rare, fierce intellectual excitement. "Harry... we're in the past. We can stop him before he becomes Voldemort. We can destroy the existing Horcruxes and prevent the others. We can—"

Harry didn't answer right away.
He looked around Gringotts with the look of someone who knows that nothing is a coincidence

Tom Riddle was 20 years old. Hogwarts had just emerged from the shadow of the Muggle war. Many conservative wizards feared change.

And the name Peverell, erased for centuries, had suddenly returned.

When he finally spoke, his voice was calm, cool and strategic.

"We can't attack Voldemort right away. If we move too soon, we'll disappear before we even begin. First, we need to let the Wizarding World know that Lord Peverell has returned."

Hermione looked at him in surprise: this was not the boy who had fought to survive.

He was a man who planned to win.

"A name as ancient as ours," Harry continued, "is pure power in this period of history. We will have respect. Influence. Access."

The Goblin nodded with a slow bow. "The Peverells were a house before there were pureblood houses. Your return will not go unnoticed."

Harry gripped the parchment. "This is exactly what I want."

Hermione took a deep breath, regaining her composure. "Then the first step is to integrate us into wizarding society. A residence. Public records. Ancient family..."

Harry looked at her. "And most importantly, a message."

He walked toward the bank exit, his stride firm and confident. Hermione followed.

As the doors of Gringotts opened on post-war wizarding London, with its new signs, its glittering shops, and wizards who had never heard of Harry Potter, Harry uttered words Hermione would never have expected:

“Voldemort won his war because no one saw him coming.”
“This time… the world will know that Lord Peverell is here.”

Hermione didn't take her eyes off him.

Harry wasn't just changing history.

Harry was declaring war.

Chapter Text

Harry and Hermione arrived in Diagon Alley in 1946 like two ghosts from an era that no one knew.
The alley was brighter, less crowded, yet it vibrated with a tension that no one seemed to really perceive: the Second Muggle World War had just ended, but the Wizarding World was only celebrating its own illusory stability.

No one looked at them suspiciously. No one recognized them.
And that was precisely the power of anonymity.
A power Harry had never had in his life.

Hermione adjusted the elegant cloak the Goblins had given them along with their identification documents. A black cloak, sewn with silver threads that formed the Peverell symbol on the lining. Harry did the same, and for the first time, his robes didn't fit him like a disguise.

They were a title.
A legacy.
A silent statement.

“No one will stop us,” Hermione muttered, looking at the Ministry of Magic sign gleaming in the distance, much grander and cleaner than they had known it.

Harry breathed in slowly. The sounds of the alley, the footsteps, the voices, the smell of spices and parchment... everything seemed unreal. Yet he felt a cold, clear, cutting certainty inside him: this was the right moment.

"First public appearance," Harry said. "Official. Formal. Let them know the Peverells are back. The rest will come later."

Hermione nodded, a flash of excitement in her eyes he hadn't seen in years. She was back to the girl who dreamed of changing the world, but now with the intelligence of a woman who had seen what happened when the world refused to listen.

As they approached the entrance to the Ministry, two uniformed Aurors approached to stop them.

“Documents,” said the first, in an official tone.

Hermione handed over the sealed parchment. The Auror opened it, and his face changed color when he saw the black seal.

The symbol of the Deathly Hallows.

“L-Lord Peverell…?” he stammered.

Harry inclined his head slightly. "Hadrian Peverell. And my sister, Hermione Peverell. We're here to officially register our return to the British Wizarding World."

The Aurors exchanged a terrified look and, without asking questions, parted to the sides.

Not out of courtesy.

By instinct.

The golden doors of the Ministry swung open.

Silently.
Without being touched.

Hermione noticed and whispered, “They’re recognizing you.”

Harry didn't answer, but in that moment he understood something:
The Gifts were not objects.
They were wills.

And the will of Death was leading the way.

At that moment, as they entered, every whisper began to die away. Every wizard in the central hall turned. Not because they knew who they were… but because they felt…What they were.

Two young strangers, yet impossible to ignore.

History had not yet written the name of Tom Riddle.

But it had just rewritten the Peverells'.

The doors to the Ministry's great hall swung open as they entered, and a sudden silence enveloped the entire atrium. The stairways and balconies filled with curious, astonished, and fearful glances.
The name Peverell had not been spoken for centuries… but it had not been forgotten.

When the Minister of Magic appeared, Harry immediately realized they had entered a game far different from those of their time. The man wore a ceremonial cloak studded with ancient symbols, and moved with a regal stride.
He didn't rush toward them. He didn't hurry.
He reached them as he would royal dignitaries.

“Lord Hadrian Peverell… Lady Hermione Peverell.”
His voice was deep, filled with wonder and deference. "The wizarding world thought you were gone."

Harry bowed his head with a grace he had never used as a boy, but which seemed natural in his ancient robes.

"Our family has wandered a lot, Minister."

The man came closer again, with a satisfied smile, like someone experiencing an event destined for the history books.
"The Peverells were said to be extinct. Legends... fairy tales."
His voice cracked in a question that the whole room, holding its breath, was waiting for:
"Where were you? Where have you been hiding all these years?"

Harry didn't hesitate.

"On the run, Minister. From the greatest terror our time has known."

A whisper ran through the room.

Grindelwald.

Hermione spoke for the first time, her voice clear and firm. “Our father feared that our blood, our name, and what was rightfully ours, might be used by him.”

The Minister nodded slowly, his eyes shining with respect and greed: no house enjoyed such antiquity as the Peverells.

Harry continued, measuring his words:
"Now that Grindelwald has been defeated, my father's final wish was simple: to return to London. To reclaim our blood. Our history. And our seat."

The word seat fell like a stone into the mirror of water.

The Minister paled for just an instant: in the Wizengamot, the Peverell seat had been empty for centuries. An enormous, indisputable political power, older than the Malfoys, the Blacks, the Greengrasses, the Rosiers.

Then he found his smile again.
A broad, diplomatic, complacent smile.

"Of course! Of course! The Peverells have always had their place in our court."
He stepped back and raised his voice for everyone to hear:
"Let the Wizarding World acknowledge the return of the oldest house in our history!"

Applause erupted. Not warm… reverent.

Hermione bowed her head, with aristocratic composure, but inside she was seething.
Harry remained still. Careful. Cold.

The Minister extended his arm, a ceremonious invitation:
"Follow me. Today, London celebrates the return of the Peverells."

As they moved through the crowd, Harry spoke softly, just for Hermione:

“We gave him the story he wanted to hear.”

Hermione replied with an imperceptible nod.
They both knew the truth:

they had not returned for a seat.
Not for honor.
Not for political power.

They had returned for a name that had not yet been spoken.

Tom Riddle.

And this world wasn't ready.

The Minister led them through wide, gleaming corridors, where ancient portraits glared at the newcomers with suspicion or mute recognition of the blood that preceded them.
Every step echoed like an announcement.

When the doors of the Seat Hall opened, Hermione held a breath.

It was enormous.
Circular.
With white marble steps and antique wooden thrones inlaid with the symbols of the greatest magical families. Each chair wasn't placed haphazardly: it was a declaration of power, a place in the hierarchy of a world that, beneath the façade of civilization, thrived on domination and bloodshed.

The Minister stopped in the center, almost theatrically.

“The return of the Peverells is an event this Court has awaited for centuries.”

Hermione guided her gaze upwards, following the line of seats.
There were the Blacks, with their star-spangled crest.
The Greengrass, elegant and cold as glass.
The Lestranges, dark, still, with eyes that calculated every breath.
And there, among shadows and sculpted marbles, the Malfoys: platinum, flawless, with their necks held high as if they were breathing a superior air.

Harry didn't speak.
But he saw everything.

He saw who was already corrupt.
Who aspired.
Who was plotting.

And none of them had any idea that a Peverell was reading them like open pages.

The Minister pointed to a side staircase.

"The seat of your house is not here, among us."

Heads turned. Some murmured.

Harry and Hermione climbed the steps, and the room seemed to hold its breath.
At the top, next to the Minister's throne, was a massive black chair, carved with ancient runes that seemed to pulse in the torchlight.

The Seat of the Peverells.

The tallest.
The most feared.

When Harry saw it, he understood why no one had ever dared to claim it: it wasn't just a place of power. It was a warning.

As they moved forward, Harry looked back at the crowd.
The flawless platinum of the Malfoys.
The dark, sharp iris of the Lestranges.
The elegant frost of the Greengrass.

Then his gaze froze.

A young man, with hard but not mean eyes, with ink-black hair and noble features.
Orion Black.

For a moment Harry's heart skipped a beat.
It was like seeing Sirius again, stiffer, more whole, but with the same cut of his jaw, the same flame held back in his eyes.

It wasn't emotional.
It was a shot in the chest.
A wound that had never truly healed.

Hermione felt him stiffen and, without a word, squeezed his arm.
The contact was brief, but sufficient.

In her brown eyes, Harry saw the same grief that had accompanied him for the past few years: the friends lost, the war won… and then betrayed.

They had gone back in time.
But the pain hadn't gone away.
Only transformed.

Harry lifted his chin.

If Sirius had lost his life to change the world…
Harry had come back to really change it.

The Minister raised his voice, imposingly:

“By decree of the Wizengamot, and by right of blood, House Peverell returns today to claim its place in the Wizarding Court!”

A sharp sound filled the hall: the elder wizards' staffs tapped against the marble, acknowledging the announcement.

Harry stepped forward, his voice low but sharp as a blade:

"The Peverells are back."

Absolute silence.

Hermione looked up, her eyes bright but proud.

That day they weren't just claiming a throne.

They were declaring the beginning of their war.

As soon as the Minister concluded his official statement, the entire room came to life.
Officials, aristocrats, and elders of the Wizengamot rose to their feet, a mixture of respect, excitement, and ambition in their eyes.

The first to move was Abraxas Malfoy, young, elegant, and with the natural arrogance of one who believes everything belongs to him. He approached with a refined smile, bowing his head slightly.

“Lord Peverell. Lady Peverell.”

His voice was slipping like silk and poison. "What an honor to see such a… mythological house again. It is our duty, and pleasure, to welcome you among us."

Harry replied with a minimal nod. "Malfoy."

As if that name alone was enough.

From the steps below, Orion Black and two members of the Lestranges approached, drawn like moths to the fire of newly rekindled power.

Orion spoke formally: "A historic event like this deserves a celebration. The Blacks would be delighted to host an evening in your honor."
Abraxas Malfoy added immediately, "But it would be more appropriate to celebrate at Peverell Manor, don't you think? It would be... instructive to see a place closed for centuries reopened."

Murmurs of approval went through the seats.
Everyone was waiting for the same thing: to measure the Peverells, evaluate their riches, the alliances, the vulnerability.

But before Harry could answer, the room went silent.

A man was walking calmly forward, his beard short and red, his eyes bright behind his half-glasses, his clothes simple compared to the others, but filled with an aura that was impossible to ignore.

Silence.

Albus Dumbledore.

Still young, famous for Grindelwald's downfall, already a mind that dominated every room he entered.

His curious gaze passed over Harry and Hermione as if he were reading a book written in an ancient language.

"It seems to me," he said calmly, "that House Peverell has just arrived in London. Before we demand their time… perhaps we should give them a moment to orient themselves in our society."

The Minister nodded with obvious gratitude: Dumbledore was already the only person in that room capable of silencing the most powerful.

Hermione understood the game. This world was built by men who spoke for her, who would give her away and trade her like a marriage pawn, an ornament next to her brother.
If she remained silent, she would become exactly that.

She took a step forward.

“Thank you, Professor Dumbledore.”
Her voice was clear, but cold. "But I can speak alone."

A wave of murmurs ran through the room. A woman… addressing the Court without male permission?

Abraxas Malfoy raised an eyebrow, amused as if he were witnessing some curious game.

Hermione continued:

"We thank House Black for the offer and the Malfoys for their interest. But a return is not a celebration. It's a commitment. Before opening our doors, we want to observe, evaluate, and understand what our country has become."

Some turned up their noses.
Lestrange stared at her as if he didn't know whether to insult her or admire her.
And everyone looked at Harry.

If he had silenced her, they would have understood that House Peverell was like the others: patriarchal, predictable, tameable.

But when Harry met the gazes fixed on him, the room went cold.

His green eyes had no warmth.
No uncertainty.
Just a warning.

Anyone who tried to silence Hermione… would face him.

And it seemed that, for an instant, even the furthest torch in the room trembled in the flame.

Dumbledore watched him with an interest so deep it seemed suspicious.
An intelligent, dangerous, curious flash.

"A wise answer," he said finally. "Caution is a rare virtue among the ancient houses."

Hermione bowed slightly. Harry didn't move.

The Minister tapped his cane twice on the marble. "Then the session is concluded. Let the Wizengamot recognize the return of the Peverells."

Harry put his hand to Hermione:

“Come ‘Mione.” The Gaunt ring had turned into a pinky ring, the Resurrection Stone glinted in the candelabra light, to everyone’s eye it looked like a normal Heir ring, but Harry knew that Dumbledore had figured out what it was.

Harry smiled at his old mentor, a slow and calculating one, Dumbledore seemed to open his blue eyes wide and they began to shine with awareness and a hint of amusement.

The room slowly began to empty, but everyone continued to steal glances at the two brothers.

Fear. Lust. Strategy.

Hermione whispered, "Did you see Dumbledore's eyes? He was studying us."

Harry: "Let him do it. Those who think they know everything often don't see the blade coming."

And behind them, Dumbledore was still watching them.

Not like a professor.

Like a man who feels the wind changing… and wants to understand where it is blowing from.

The carriage stopped its journey along the last stretch of pavement.
Ahead of them, beyond the ivy-covered gate, stood Peverell Manor.

It wasn't a villa.
It wasn't a house.
It was a castle.

Gothic towers that scratched the English sky, windows as tall as cathedrals, gargoyles worn by time.
Yet, despite centuries of abandonment, the place did not breathe decay.

He breathed anticipation.

Hermione swallowed the cold, biting air. "This is… wonderful."

Harry stood still, watching the walls with the same gaze he reserved for an opponent.
Calculating. Silent. Prepared.

They entered.

The doors opened of their own accord, as if the ancient magic finally recognized the blood of its masters.
The main hall was a huge cathedral of black and silver stone.
Huge carpets, embroidered with symbols of the Three Relics.
Portraits of ancestors followed them with intelligent, stern, curious eyes.

Hermione touched a silver banister. "It's not just a house. It's a warning."

Harry: "It's a throne."
And he was right.

Only when they were certain they were alone did the public mask fall. Hermione sank into an armchair while Harry remained standing, gazing out the high windows.

"They welcomed us like royalty," Hermione murmured. "But it's not respectful. It's fear. Curiosity. Calculation."

Harry didn't turn around. "This is exactly what we need."

Hermione took a deep breath. She was still taking it all in:

• their new identity,
  
  
• the seats of the Wizengamot,
  
  
• Dumbledore's gaze,
  
  
• the Malfoys' ambition.
  
  

"Death sent us here for something," she said. "Not just to destroy Tom. To change everything."

Harry finally turned around, and when he spoke, Hermione realized that the boy in front of her was no longer the boy who had grown up on Privet Drive.
He wasn't even the hero of the war.

He was the Lord of a House.

"Malfoy will come to us," he said in a calm, icy voice. "He's too power-hungry to hold back. And when he does, Tom Riddle will know who we are."

"And that doesn't worry you?" Hermione asked

“No.”
The response was immediate, certain.
"If he wants to touch us, he'll have to do it while the entire aristocracy is watching. And I want them to watch."

"Why?"

Harry moved forward, crossing the hall like a general studying the terrain of a future battle.

"Because we will change this world. And we won't do it by force. Not with riots, not with duels."
His green eyes shone in the reflection of the candles.

"We will slither through the Ministry like snakes. We will change laws, alliances, traditions. We will make the nobles believe they desired change. They will be proud of what we have done... without realizing that we have manipulated them."

Hermione looked at him as if she had never really known him.

Harry Potter has always been good.
Right.
Idealist.

Hadrian Peverell, however, was something else entirely.

"And when the storm comes," he concluded, "they'll already be on our side. And no one will help Tom Riddle."

Silence.
A powerful silence.

Hermione stood up slowly. Her heart was pounding, but not from fear.

“You are… ruthless.”

Harry inclined his head. "I learned from the best."
“Who?”
“Death.”

Hermione smiled. But it wasn't a kind smile.
It was a smile that many generations of wizards would have regretted, had they only lived to see it.

"Then let's do it," she said. "This world will belong to the Peverells."

Harry nodded. "And the Peverells don’t forgive."

Outside, the wind bent the trees around the castle, as if magic itself had bowed to its new masters.

The next few weeks slipped by cold and silent, as November darkened the meadows around the manor.
Hermione spent almost all of it turning the ruin into a home.

The corridors, once filled with dust and cobwebs, once again shone like obsidian mirrors.
The rooms filled with the light of enchanted candles, the curtains were renewed, the glass repaired, the stonework restored.
Each room had a memory, a shadow, a story written on the walls.

And it was in the kitchens that they found them.

Little eyes glowing in the semi-darkness.
Pointed ears, thin hands and backs curved with age.

House Elves.

Not one.
Three.

“Masters…” they murmured in chorus, as if they were praying.

They had been there for generations, bound by the magic of the Peverell blood.
They had survived time, wars, the abandonment of the manor.

Hermione knelt, her voice gentle. "We are not your masters. You can be free if you wish."

The response was immediate.
One of the elves fell to his knees, trembling.

"No! No, Young Mistress! Freedom is… horror! No place for us outside! Peverell Manor is home! We want to serve, we must serve!"

The other two started crying, terrified at the thought of being chased away.

Hermione froze. All her principles, her ideals, her fight for elves' rights...
they crashed against true, ancient, deep-rooted fear.

Harry placed a hand on her shoulder.
His voice was low, calm… sad.

"No one will accept them outside. Not now. Not in this century."

It was 1946.
House-elves weren't just slaves: they were property.

Hermione pressed her lips together, but surrendered to reality.

"All right," she said finally. "Help us, but we won't punish you, we won't coerce you, we won't humiliate you. And if one day you want to leave this house, we'll help you."

The elves bowed so deeply that they almost touched the floor.

"The Young Mistress is good," they murmured. "The Young Mistress will bring the House back to life."

And so it was.

Under their guidance, the manor came to life.
The rooms were polished, the bookcases filled with restored volumes, and the main hall once again welcomed white fires that produced no smoke.
Ancient spells, made to serve the Peverells, reactivated themselves.

Hermione, while she was directing the work, often thought about that magic.
It wasn't like Hogwarts.
It wasn't like the Ministry.

It was older.
Darker.
Almost… alive.

As night fell, when the wind howled through the towers, Hermione could not help but think that the Peverells had never had simple servants or simple homes.

They had dominion.

And for the first time, she was not afraid of power.

She was hungry for it.

While Hermione restored the manor, Harry entered the oldest part of the building.
Narrow corridors, silver dust, forgotten portraits.
The air was colder there, thicker… as if magic was listening to every step.

At the end of the path, he found a black oak door.
A mantle, a stick and a stone were carved into the wood.
The Gifts.

When he touched it, the door opened without a single sound.

It was the office of the Head of the Family.

Shelves filled with tomes, ancient scrolls, weapons hung like relics, and a large obsidian desk.
But it was the portrait behind the desk that forced him to stop.

A man sat there with a proud and calm posture: ebony hair, dark, lively eyes, a neat beard, strong, handsome features.
He had the air of someone who knew more secrets than the world itself.

Ignotus Peverell.

The portrait looked up. And smiled.

"Finally," he said warmly. "An heir who carries my blood in his veins."

Harry approached calmly. "I... I'm not from this era."

Ignotus watched in silence, his gaze slow and penetrating. His expression changed: curiosity, then awareness, then sadness.

“I see death… pain… and a fate no one should bear,” he murmured. “Tell me, Hadrian Peverell, what has become of my blood in the future?

Harry took a deep breath.
He didn't lie.
He told everything: Voldemort, the boy who lived, the Dursley, the war, the lost friends, the scars.

When he finished, Ignotus looked older, more tired, as if even the paint had absorbed the weight of those words.

"Tom Riddle… a descendant of Cadmus, perhaps," he murmured. "A son of our lineage who became a scourge upon the world."
He shook his head. "What a burden our legacy has left you..."

Harry smiled, but not sweetly.
With truth.

"It's not a burden. It's what gave me freedom."

Ignotus looked at him, surprised.

Harry spoke with a calmness that seemed to come from a place deeper than magic.

"You three brothers believed Death could be defeated. Pursued. Deceived."
He placed his hand on the desk.
"But Death is not an enemy. It is not a master. It is not a promise."

The portrait's dark eyes became attentive, eager for every word.

"Death is a part of life. One half of the same coin. Whoever tries to master it... loses. I have accepted it."
Harry straightened, his green eyes steady as steel.
"And that's why Death follows me. Not to possess me. Because I'm no longer afraid. And a man who doesn't fear death... is master of his own life."

The portrait remained silent for a long, long time.

Then, slowly, Ignotus smiled.
A proud smile. Painful. Eternal.

“Then you are not just an heir, Hadrian Peverell.”
He bowed his head slightly, like a king acknowledging another king.

“You are what the three of us have failed to become.”

Harry didn't answer.
It wasn't needed.

It was Ignotus who broke the silence.

"Where does a Master of Death go now?"

"To rewrite the world," Harry said. "Not to conquer death... but to give life a future."

Ignotus leaned back in his painted chair.

“Then listen to my voice when the darkest days come.
Death has chosen you, but life will follow you… if you know how to make yourself feared and respected.”

Harry bowed his head in silence.

And in that moment, a pact was made between a boy from the future and an ancestor dead for centuries.

Not of blood.

Of destiny.

Three days later, a white carriage with silver wheels drove through the manor gates.
The elves warned Hermione, and soon after Harry reached the main entrance.

Abraxas Malfoy was already there, wrapped in a pale fur coat, his platinum hair flawless despite the icy wind.
He entered as if he had been granted a privilege, not an invitation.

His gaze slid across the renovated hall, the silver torches, the polished floor.
"Peverell Manor doesn't seem to have suffered from the absence of its owners," he commented with a thin smile. "Some thought it was in ruins."

Hermione descended the stairs with controlled grace.
She did not bow.
She did not greet him with deference.

"Our House doesn't fall," she said, her voice gentle but sharp. "It simply sleeps."

Abraxas looked slightly surprised that she was the one speaking, and even more surprised that Harry was silently letting her do so.

"You've been the subject of much discussion in the Wizengamot," Malfoy continued. "Rarely does an ancient house reappear so… triumphantly."
He paused, studying Harry carefully.
“And we think it would be… beneficial for our company to officially welcome you.”

Harry raised an eyebrow, but before he could answer, Hermione spoke.

"I assume by 'society' you don't mean the entire wizarding world," she said. "But a very select group of families."

Abraxas's mouth twisted into a diplomatic smile.
“Some bloodlines are more… worthy of interest.”

Hermione nodded politely, as if she were giving him a point.

"And among them… there's someone in particular who's eager to meet you."

The air grew heavier.
Harry knew the name before he even heard it.

"A dear friend of mine," Malfoy continued, "a very promising young man. A natural leader. I think he... would appreciate your worldview."

Hermione bowed her head slightly. Malfoy's tone was diplomatic, but underneath it all was hunger: power, alliances, control.

“And what is this young prodigy’s name?” she asked with innocent courtesy.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle," Abraxas replied. "We were students together at Hogwarts. A rare talent."

Harry's expression didn't change.
No blinking, no surprises.
Ignotus, in the portrait, would have approved.

Hermione smiled.

“We are flattered by the interest,” she said, “and Peverell Manor is in more than suitable condition to host a reception.”

Malfoy's eyes widened slightly, unprepared for that speed.

“We’ll be hosting a winter ball,” Hermione continued, “and sending owl invitations to families worthy of being involved.”

A slap disguised as kindness.

Abraxas turned to Harry, almost expecting him to intervene, to take back command, to put “his sister” back in her place.

But Harry remained still, his hands behind his back, his gaze calm and sharp.

He just smiled.

A brief, icy smile.
Which said:Yes, she's the one speaking. And yes, you have to listen to her.

For the first time since he had entered, Malfoy looked uncertain.

“So… let’s wait for the invitation,” he said finally, clearing his throat.

Hermione inclined her head slightly. "It will be a memorable reception."

Malfoy took his leave with forced elegance, and only as the carriage disappeared over the mainmast did Hermione let the stiffness fall from her shoulders.

Harry turned to her.

"Perfect."

Hermione smiled, but there was no shyness in her eyes.
There was strategy.

"They wanted to study us," she said. "Now they will show up at our castle... under our rules."

Harry nodded.

“And Tom Riddle,” he murmured, “will come to the Peverells’ place, thinking he will meet two naive young pureblood.”

Hermione looked at him for a long moment. "And instead he'll meet Death."

Chapter Text

Tom Marvolo Riddle knew he was the best.
Not out of vanity.
For certain.

He had understood it years ago, when the lights in the orphanage had all gone out at once with a simple thought, when the children who tormented him had run away screaming without him touching them, when the very air seemed to obey his will.

At Hogwarts he had only given form to the evidence.

It didn't take much: a measured smile, a low and respectful voice, an elegant posture.
Poor Professor Slughorn was the easiest victim. Just look into his eyes with that feigned candor, and the man melted like hot butter.

"A rare talent! A young prodigy!"
Oh, how he loved to hear that.

The funny thing was that people wanted to be fooled.
They wanted a promising, bright, kind boy.
They wanted to believe that an orphan could become a lord.

And Tom gave it to them.

But the truth… the truth was for him.

Tom knew he was beauty made flesh.
The sharp face, the dark, magnetic eyes, the velvety voice.
He walked around the common room like a Greek sculpture that had learned to move: everyone looked at him, no one dared to stare for too long.

And when some tried—
when the girls looked up, they blushed, they trembled slightly—
Tom smiled to himself.

Beauty was a weapon.
A shiny blade.
A sweet poison.

The purebloods, for all their arrogance, were not immune.
They thought they were untouchable… but it didn't take much to capture them:
a whispered title, a promise of power, a perfect smile.

Tom was good at making himself desired.

And now, the Peverells were back.

A name that was almost legendary.
An ancient house, older than the Malfoys, the Blacks, the Lestranges.
A name spoken in secret, as if it belonged to the same magic that flowed through the veins of the wizarding world.

Tom had smiled when Abraxas had told him:

"Two heirs. Young. Beautiful. Mysterious."

It was like smelling blood in water.

Then came the invitation.

A black envelope, sealed with silver and wax.
The symbol of the Three Relics engraved on the clasp.

Tom touched it with a finger.
It wasn't fear, nor wonder.

It was interest.

The Peverells had real power.
Not be taken by force.
It cannot be bought or passed down from generations of weak nobles.

Ancient power.
Dark power.
Power that was not meant to be explained.

Tom broke the seal.
The owl had not yet flown away before he had already made up his mind.

He would have participated.

He would have smiled, seduced, fascinated.
He would do what it always did: creep into cracks, infiltrate minds, poison from within.

And then he would find out who those two brothers were.

Whoever they were, they couldn't be better than him.

Because no one is better than Tom Marvolo Riddle.

And if the Peverells thought they were returning to reclaim magical London…

…they would discover that magical London already belonged to him.

Tom prepared himself with the precision of a ritual.

The black and emerald tunic was perfectly pressed, a gift “on loan” from Orion Black, elegant and slipping like a snake on the skin.
The hair, dark as ink, carefully combed.
Every button polished.
Every gesture calculated.

The smile—
his most charming smile, the one that made Slughorn bend and half of Hogwarts blush—
It was early.

Tom Riddle entered the carriage knowing that he was the most handsome, the most intelligent, the most powerful of all the guests.

He was sure of it.

But nothing, nothing had prepared him for what he saw beyond the threshold of Peverell Manor.

The hall was impossible to describe: crystals suspended in the air, white flames that did not produce smoke, an enchanted ceiling grander than Hogwarts itself.
And yet… no one watched the magic.

Everyone was watching him.

Hadrian Peverell.

Tom saw him in the center of the room, surrounded by nobles who were talking and laughing as if the world revolved around that single point.

And maybe… It really did.

Hadrian didn't walk: he dominated.
Every step was a declaration of ancient power, of blood that asked no permission.
It wasn't Malfoy arrogance—bloated, loud, desperate.

It was pure power.

Power that didn't need to be proven… because it was part of the air.

Hadrian was handsome. But not like the boys who look at themselves in the mirror to please themselves.
He was as beautiful as a rare, perfect, dangerous weapon.

The sculpted face, the strong jaw, rosy lips that seemed touched by the winter cold.
The black tunic with silver embroidery hugged the athletic body without flaunting it.

And then the hair: black, long, tied at the nape of the neck with a silver ribbon.
The candlelight made each strand shine like silk thread.

Tom had seen beauty.
He had used beauty.
But he had never seen this beauty.

A beauty that didn't ask to be looked at.

He obliged.

But the real doom for Hadrian Peverell… was in his eyes.

Poison green.
Malachite green.
Green as the light of the Anathema.

Tom remained still.
Hit.
Shocked.

In Hadrian's eyes he saw no kindness, no naivety, no ambition.

He saw Death.

Not sudden, brutal, cruel death.
No.
He saw the ecstasy of death. The peace. The silence.
The power of those who do not fear it, of those who command it.

Tom couldn't remember ever breathing less.

For a heartbeat—just one—he felt like he was looking into a darkly mirror, a self he had never met.

Hadrian looked up.
Their eyes met.

And Tom, who feared nothing and no one,
he felt something he hadn't felt in years.

Not fear.

Danger.

Hadrian smiled slowly, as if he recognized him.
As if he knew who he was… and wasn't the least bit impressed.

Tom was forced to look away.

Tom Marvolo Riddle.

He, who dominated every room he entered.

He, who was born to command.

That evening, for the first time in his life, he was not the king.

It was the spectator.

And Hadrian Peverell was the ruler.

Tom couldn't breathe.
And not for Hadrian's physical beauty. Not for the perfection of his features, not for his sculpted physique, not for his eyes that pierced like green blades or the scar on his forehead. 

No.
It was that smile.

A smile that asked for nothing and promised everything.
A smile that was a challenge, a command, a cruel caress.
Like a thin blade, pierced straight into the heart.
Like the art of a lover who knows exactly where to strike.

Tom, who had seduced, manipulated, dominated hearts and minds without batting an eyelid, felt something unknown and disturbing.
Love.

A feeling he had never encountered, never understood.
And now, in just one look, he felt it explode inside him like a silent fire.

Hadrian wasn't looking at him indulgently.
He was not enchanted by his charm.
He did not seek his respect or his alliance.
Hadrian was cruel. Elegant, icy cruelty. Every smile, every lip curl, every movement was calculated. Political. Strategic.

And Tom understood that he would never deceive that man.
Not with seductive smiles.
Not with promises of power.
Not with lies studied in the dormitories of Hogwarts.

Tom had met his worthy opponent.
For the first time, someone was superior. Not physically, not by blood, not by cunning... but by something Tom couldn't control: presence, intrinsic power, mastery of life and death.

Tom's heart beat faster, yet he couldn't feel it.
He was paralyzed by the evidence.
Hadrian Peverell wasn't playing. He wasn't courting. He wasn't pretending.
Every smile, every tilt of the head, every step was a message: I know who you are, and you will never be on my level.

Tom didn't understand.
He didn't understand how, in a single instant, a boy could destroy years of arrogance, of security, of self-confidence.
And yet it had happened.

The boy before him wasn't just an enemy.
He was the ideal incarnate.
He was the perfect opponent.
He was the only one Tom could ever love and fear at the same time.

A smile from Hadrian, light, barely visible, struck Tom like an arrow: cruel, lethal, unforgettable.
And Tom Marvolo Riddle, the boy who had learned to rule the world with fascination and terror, knew a new truth, terrible and irresistible:

For the first time in his life, he was defeated.

Tom walked forward, each step measured, slow, as if walking toward an altar.
It wasn't confidence, it wasn't arrogance.
It was reverence.

He had never experienced anything like it.
He presented himself before Hadrian Peverell as a visitor bows before an immortal work of art: with admiration, awe, and a respect he would never have granted to anyone else.

“Tom… Marvolo Riddle,” he said, his voice perfectly modulated, but trembling inside.
Every word seemed fragile, loving, almost pathetic.
And Tom Marvolo Riddle, the boy who had dominated minds and hearts at Hogwarts, sensed it at once: he's making a fool of himself in front of a boy.

Hadrian was watching him.
Not with curiosity.
Not with judgment.
He was reading him. He knew him.
As if he had walked through the rooms of his soul, had leafed through the pages of his life, and now read his most secret thoughts, the ones that Tom didn't even confess to himself.

Hadrian's smile, barely visible, was caressing, almost veiled in mockery.
And Tom felt the heat of defeat and desire mix into a single knot inside him.
For Hadrian was not just an adversary: ​​he was a secret that Tom coveted, forbidden knowledge that promised both power and torment.

Tom shivered, yet he didn't flinch.
Fear had nothing to do with it.
It was lust. A pure, intimate lust for the knowledge Hadrian held, just as he had craved power and knowledge during his years at Hogwarts.

“Greetings to you, Tom Marvolo Riddle,” Hadrian murmured, inclining his head slightly. “I have the impression we already know each other… even if it’s the first time we’re meeting.”

Tom felt his breathing catch.
Every fiber of his being screamed: How can a boy read so deeply into me?

Yet, instead of being scared, a shiver of excitement ran down his spine.
The desire to understand Hadrian was identical to the desire he had felt as a student: to know everything, control everything, possess everything.
But this time the secret wasn't a Horcrux, nor a forbidden spell.
It was Hadrian himself.

Tom took a breath, trying to hide the admiration and tremor in his voice.
But he knew, with a certainty that made him shudder, that nothing he had known before could prepare him for this.

Hadrian Peverell was not just an adversary, an obstacle, or a legend to be challenged.
It was the first mystery that Tom truly longed to encounter, with the same fever with which a boy yearns for hidden power, the first forbidden magic, the knowledge that will change the world.

And for the first time in his life, Tom wasn't trying to dominate.
He was begging, inside himself, to understand.

Tom Marvolo Riddle stood still, like a visitor who dares not breathe before a masterpiece.
Hadrian Peverell spoke, and each word was measured, elegant, sharp as a curved blade.

But Tom wasn't really listening.
Not with the ears.

He looked at Hadrian's lips.
The perfect lips, full, rosy, slightly curved at the corner in a smile that spoke without the need for words.
Every syllable he spoke seemed shaped by those features, as if the voice itself were born from that cruel smile, and every sound was both an invitation and a punishment.

Tom felt something strange, shocking, and almost painful.
A shiver ran down his spine, slow, burning.
The knowledge that this man—this young man—could not be fooled.
That nothing Tom had used before—charm, good looks, deception, seductive words, occult magic—would work.

Yet Tom longed.
He wanted to know everything.
He longed to understand.
He longed to possess… the truth of that man.

Hadrian's every word fell like a weight, yet it was incredibly musical.
There was no rush, no arrogance. Just dominance.
Yet beneath that control, beneath that aristocratic coldness, Tom sensed an almost mischievous pleasure in the way Hadrian played with minds, with perceptions, with desires.

Tom tried to speak, to assert his power, to remind himself who he was.
But his voice came out lower than usual, slightly trembling, and the words seemed fragile in the face of Hadrian's presence.

Every breath Tom took brought him closer to that smile.
Every word nailed him to that awareness: he wasn't simply attracted.
He was defeated.
In a single look, in a single smile, in a single sound from Hadrian's lips, Tom had met someone he could not conquer, not with deception, not with charm, not with magic.

And yet… he didn't want defeat.
He just wanted to know.
And he roared.
And he loved, without being able to explain it, without wanting to admit it.

Hadrian Peverell was no ordinary enemy.
It was the measure of everything Tom Riddle had never possessed.
And the temptation of that possession was irresistible.

Tom stood there, rooted to the floor, as Hadrian spoke.
Every word was measured, slow, elegant… yet lethal.

There was more than charm in his words.
There was strategy.
There was power.
There was cruelty disguised as kindness.

Tom perceived every nuance, every silence, every pause as a game of chess in which Hadrian was moving more pieces than he could see.
And the more he listened, the tighter the knot in his chest tightened.

“Tom Marvolo Riddle,” said Hadrian in a calm, almost melodious voice, inclining his head slightly, “Malfoy tells me that you are a promising young man and that you know how to dominate English wizarding society… but I wonder how much you truly understand and what you wish to achieve.”

Tom swallowed laboriously.
Not because he was surprised by the question—but by the tone, the certainty, the coldness tinged with mockery that crept between the words.

"I..." he began, trying to modulate his voice, "I control what I desire. There's nothing that escapes me."

Hadrian smiled faintly, a slow, surgical smile.
"Ah... and yet here you are in front of me, and already you feel... observed, measured. Isn't that curious?"

Tom felt a shiver run down his spine.
Every syllable Hadrian spoke seemed to dig deep inside him, revealing desires he himself knew nothing about.

"If you think I can be fooled, you're wrong," Hadrian continued, his green eyes gleaming like cursed gems. "But if you truly want to understand me... perhaps you'll have to learn not to dominate everything by force, Tom. Perhaps you'll have to learn to listen."

Tom frowned, his voice lower than he intended.
“Listen? I… I don’t know what rumors have reached you, Lord Peverell, but I’m not here to deceive you.”

Hadrian cocked his head to the side and laughed with abandon, Tom watched enraptured by the way dimples had formed on his cheeks as he laughed.
"Ah, but you see... I haven't heard anything, Tom Riddle. And I..." he paused, looking at him as if reading his very heart, "I understand a lot about you. More than you dare imagine."

Tom felt his throat dry.
A thought he never thought possible crossed his mind: I want to know everything. I want him to know everything about me… and I want everything about him.

“And pray what do you know about me, Lord Peverell?” he said finally, trying to regain his composure. “Should I… be afraid of you?”

Hadrian stared into his eyes, his smile thin and cruel.
“No, meeting me, Tom Riddle, will be the first moment you lose control.”

Tom shivered, yet he felt a fierce, irresistible excitement.
For the first time in his life, he wasn't dominating.
He was watching.
He was learning.
And he was wishing.

Hadrian Peverell was no ordinary enemy.
He was the only one Tom wanted to win… and yet didn’t dare challenge.

Tom felt the change in the air before he saw it.
A thin silence, as if the entire room had been holding its breath.
Then he met Hadrian's gaze.

It wasn't just a look.
It was knowledge. Understanding. Condemnation.

Hadrian was reading him, as always, but this time Tom sensed something more.
Something that made him falter: Hadrian had understood.

He understood the longing Tom felt, the craving that tightened his chest.
Hadrian's fascination with power emanated effortlessly.
The attraction Tom would never dare admit, not even to himself.

Tom's heart beat faster.
A heartbeat he couldn't control.
A heartbeat that tied him to that man like an invisible rope.

Hadrian barely raised an eyebrow and looked at him again.
Not a single smile. Not a word.
Just a look.
And Tom understood immediately: that look was the beginning of his doom.

Yet, like a moth drawn to the brightest light, Tom couldn't let go.
He didn't want to.
Desire, terror, curiosity, longing—it was all concentrated in those green eyes that seemed to contain the entire world, and death itself, without the need for words.

Tom felt a thrill, as if he had suddenly been exposed to his fate.
And for the first time, the man who had manipulated hearts and minds, who had shaped people and magic to his liking…
He wanted something he couldn't easily possess.

The power of Hadrian.
His presence.
His elegant cruelty.
His calculated indifference.

Tom breathed in slowly, trying to contain the fever rising inside him.
But he knew there was no escape.
That nothing would extinguish the spark that Hadrian had lit.

And so, while the room continued to talk, laugh, watch, Tom remained still, chained by the gaze of a young man who knew no fear, who did not relinquish control, who was power and death at the same time.

Tom Marvolo Riddle, the boy who thought he could rule everything… was already lost.

Lord Peverell moved away from him and Tom spent the evening craving his attention like a petulant child craving his mother's attention.

He spoke briefly to Malfoy and Mulciber, but his eyes always rested on Hadrian.

He reached the end of the evening almost out of breath, it was as if the room had realized that there were now two King's pawns on the chessboard and they were choosing which side to take.

He had smiled, laughed, and spoken smoothly to the pureblood nobles throughout the evening, almost eager to regain ground, but it seemed his moves were limited to a field that belonged to Hadrian.

As the guests began to return home, he too made his way to the fireplace to return to his dilapidated apartment in Nocturne Alley.

Hadrian approached slowly, with the grace of someone who knows every inch of the room and is absolutely certain that he can command attention.
Every movement was studied, measured, and elegant.
A power game in which Tom was the unwitting participant.

“It was a pleasure meeting you, Tom Marvolo Riddle,” Hadrian said, his voice calm and velvety, then he looked at him with a slight mischief in his green eyes: “You are… so curious.”
Tom felt every word vibrate in his bones, like a subtle spell.

“Curious?” Tom repeated, trying to modulate his voice, to recover the coolness that had been his weapon up until that moment.
"I'm not curious."

Hadrian smiled, slightly, and bowed his head slightly.
"No?" he said. "You don't seem that way. You look at everything carefully, you observe, you evaluate... you try to understand before you decide. That..." he inclined his head slightly, "is what makes you so interesting. And so vulnerable."

Tom shivered.
Not out of fear.
Not out of respect.
Out of excitement. Longing. The feeling of being exposed, yet unable to escape.

Hadrian continued, walking slowly around Tom, each step measured, his body straight as a king standing moves between the pawns.
“You think you can dominate every person, every magic, every heart… yet here you are before me, and… you are already under my control.”

Tom clasped his hands behind his back.
He couldn't speak.
Every word seemed useless.
Every breath is an act of will.

Hadrian stopped in front of him, a few steps away.
“You want to know who’s really in charge,” he continued, his green eyes boring into his, “who can bend the rules of the game without breaking them…”
The smile, just a little wider, was cruel.
“…Then you must learn to desire what I choose to give you.”

Tom felt a shiver run down his spine.
He had known fear, power, manipulation.
He had seduced, deceived, terrorized.
But never, never had he felt a presence capable of annihilating him without touching him, of dominating him with a smile and a few words.

Hadrian tilted his head and whispered, almost to himself alone:
“And you, Tom Marvolo Riddle… you already wish.”

Tom breathed in slowly, unable to look away.
It was true.
He desired Hadrian Peverell.
He wanted to understand, to possess, to challenge… yet he already knew it wouldn't be possible.
And that awareness excited him, tormented him, he was nailing to his own desire.

Hadrian smiled, knowing exactly what effect it had.

Tom Riddle stood alone before the devastatingly cruel beauty of Hadrian Peverell and oh….

Oh, how he longed for him!

He wanted to burn his name into his skin, the name Hadrian would adorn his skin like a beautiful jewel adorned the neck of a noblewoman. He wanted to kneel at his feet, like a faithful worshipper praying to an idol. Hadrian, with his cruel smile and eyes that promised a sweet death. Oh, how he longed for him!

Chapter Text

The party had just ended: the enchanted chandeliers had gone out one after another, leaving behind only golden glimmers and the scent of elven wine and ancient parchment.
Harry and Hermione had retreated to the Peverells' private library. It was quiet outside, inside only the crackling of the fire in the fireplace.

Hermione sank onto the sofa with a dramatic sigh.

“If just one of those girls asks me again if you're available for a political wedding, I swear I'll enchant every ball gown in this room to turn mouse green.”

Harry raised an eyebrow, amused.
“Were they that desperate?”

"Desperate? They practically surrounded me. One even asked me if you preferred blondes, brunettes, or redheads. I replied that you preferred intelligence. She fainted."

Harry chuckled softly, his expression relaxed and tired.

“And Malfoy?” he asked after a moment.

Hermione put on a satisfied smile.

“He tried to 'advise' me on the proper manners of hosting a reception. I replied that, considering his family was bankrupt until two years ago, I didn't need his opinion. I think he's still trying to figure out if I insulted him.”

Harry laughed heartily. "You held your own."

“Of course. I’m a Peverell.” Her voice was proud, confident… and then, slowly, Hermione looked at him with more serious eyes.
"And you? How did it go with Tom Riddle?"

Harry didn't answer immediately. He poured himself some tea, his movements slow and controlled, as if every gesture were part of a ritual. When he spoke, it was with an almost eerie calm.

“He's attracted to me.”

Hermione's eyes widened. "...what?"

"He looked at me like something he wanted to possess. He's intelligent... arrogant... hungry. He thinks he can control everything. But he's not used to being studied."
Harry leaned back, his gaze lost in the fire.

“I will use this attraction of his to my advantage.”

Hermione was silent for a moment. Then, incredulously, "When you say 'you'll use'... do you really mean—?"

Harry gave her the same smile Tom had received: slow, elegant… cruel.

"If he wants to be seduced, he will be. I didn't choose this game... but he entered my board. And kings don't forgive, Hermione."

A shiver froze the air.

Hermione looked at him with a mixture of admiration and concern.
She had seen Harry be good, compassionate, vengeful… but like this?
It was so rare. It was so dangerous.

"Harry… you're not playing with just anyone. It's Tom Riddle."

Harry placed a hand on her shoulder, as if to reassure her—but his eyes were no longer smiling.

"I know perfectly well. That's why I'll win."

Hermione inhaled slowly.
The fireplace crackled.
And for an instant, she saw in her brother's figure not just a Peverell.

She saw a ruler.

Hermione composed herself, smoothing her skirt and arranging her curls as if she could put her thoughts in order too.
Then she shook her head and changed course, as only she knew how.

"Okay. We've attracted attention, we've shown power... but it's not enough.
What do we do now inside the Wizengamot?

Harry stopped smiling. His face returned to that of a strategic warrior.

"First, let's study the laws of time. We can't risk moving forward without knowing what paradoxes might destroy us... or destroy the future."
He took some ancient tomes from the table, books with black leather covers and silver seals.
"The Ministry doesn't believe it's possible to manipulate the timeline. If they find out we're out of place, they'll lock us away until our last breath."

Hermione nodded, but said nothing. Harry continued:

“And in the meantime… I want you to take care of the purebloods ladies.”

Hermione blinked, as if asked to scrub the floors with a toothbrush.

"Sorry, what?"

"Women don't work at the Ministry. They don't sit on committees. They can't advocate for cases..."
Harry looked at her, serious and knowing.
"But they rule the salons. They're the ones who create reputations, alliances, prenuptial agreements. Parties, tea parties, gossip... and politics. Silent, but real."

Hermione inhaled, hard as ice.

“Do you want me to make friends with a group of girls who hope to become my sister-in-law?”

Harry just smiled.

“I want you to enter where I cannot enter.
Women in this age may not control the law… but they control the men who vote.”

Hermione remained still for a few seconds.
Then she threw a pillow at Harry.

“I hate how right you are.”

Harry picked it up, amused.

"It's not ideal. But we can't choose. Not now."

Hermione crossed her arms, her voice cutting like a blade.

"All right.
I'll pretend to be the kind and perfect sister.
If they were roses… they would sting.”

Harry laughed softly. "It'll be a social massacre. I'm sure of it."

Hermione looked at him with a gleam in her eyes.
“Harry… if they think they can manipulate me to get to you, they’re sorely mistaken.”

Harry inclined his head, satisfied.

“My sister, I had no doubts.”

And it was at that moment, in the silence of the Peverell library, that they planned the first real move of their war.

He at the Ministry.
She in social circles.

—

Hermione had thought she was ready.

She had fought Death Eaters, defied death and time itself.
But nothing—nothing—had prepared her for a tearoom of bored young thoroughbreds.

The Peverells' carriage pulled up outside the Malfoy residence.
Harry wasn't with her: to make everything more effective, the young Lord had remained at the Manor, awaiting her reactions.

Hermione descended with calculated grace, like a fallen goddess in the enemy's garden.

The colors were delicate, the laughter fake, and the girls… vultures with lace gloves.

As soon as she entered, the buzz stopped.

All heads turned towards her.

Belladonna Nott, hostess for the occasion, approached with a smile that had more points than a blade.

"Lady Hermione Peverell... What an honor. We thought the new Lords wouldn't have time for a humble gathering like this."

Hermione replied with a smile that would have made an Auror falter.

"Oh, of course. My brother and I don't forget the old traditions.
Some… are even funny.”

The subtle venom of the comment made her blink.
Perfect: scratched on the first try.

The other girls surrounded her in an almost ritualistic circle.

Miss Bulstrode: "Is it true that Lord Hadrian is choosing a bride?"

Hermione took a cup of tea, with a slowness designed to build tension.

“My brother doesn't choose.
My brother… decide.”

A sharp silence fell in the living room.

Then Miss Rosier, with feigned sweetness:
"Of course, such a… precious man will need guidance. He's very young."

Hermione looked up, glacial.

“Hadrian Peverell was born to command.
And whoever stands beside him will have to be worthy of it.
Good looks and an ancient surname won't be enough."

Someone coughed.
Some turned pale.
Belladonna gripped the cup as if she wanted to shatter it.

And it was there that Hermione realized she had won the first battle.

She was not a guest.
It was a predator among fawns.

A shy voice broke the silence: a young blonde woman, with intelligent eyes and a kind air—Aysia Greengrass.

“Lady Hermione… actually, some of us are… glad you're back.
London needed to change."

Hermione looked at her with interest.
Finally, a mind.

“I'm glad someone understands this.
Ancient houses only survive if they evolve.”

Some snorted in contempt.
Greengrass smiled elegantly.

And that's how Hermione found her first ally.

At the end of the meeting, as he was leaving, he heard whispers behind him:

— "She's cold."
— "She's smart."
— "She's dangerous."
— “Just like her brother.”

Hermione raised her chin, satisfied.

She had played in their world… and won.

When she returned to Peverell Manor, Harry was waiting for her in the study, a stack of books on temporal laws before him.

"How did it go?"
he asked, without looking up.

Hermione sat down with regal calm.

"The Ladies are ours. The girls are afraid of me.
And one of them admires me… that's worth more than any wand."

Harry finally looked up and smiled slowly.

"Perfect.
We have dug the first foundations.
Now… let’s start tearing down the old world.”

—

Being invited to Grimmauld Place should have left Harry indifferent.
Yet, as he crossed that threshold, the past gnawed at his heart.
It was the house Sirius had grown up in, the house that had hated him, and the only one that would protect him.

Now it was the perfect stage.

The room was a riot of antique elegance: dark velvets, polished wood, silver everywhere.
Orion Black greeted him with a courteous, noble, even warm smile.

"Lord Peverell, it's an honor. Your family has been missing in London."

Harry tilted his head, flawless.
"The pleasure is mine, Lord Black. Your courtesy is rare these days."

Walburga, sitting next to her husband, studied him with burning eyes.
She was young, beautiful, and looked at Harry as one might look at a hero from legend: with mingled adoration and danger.

Tom was already there.

Beautiful as a Roman statue, composed as a prince, but his eyes—his eyes never left Harry for a moment.
When Harry nodded politely and continued on, it took his breath away.

Ignore him.
A perfect move.

Harry didn't sit down right away. He walked around the room as if it were made for him.
Every pureblood paid attention.

Lestrange, with his cold arrogance.
Rosier, smile as sharp as a thin knife.
Mulciber, small and greedy eyes.
Malfoy, elegant and irritated, still hurt by the humiliation inflicted by Hermione.

And finally…Tom.

“If I may ask, Lord Peverell,” Orion’s voice was soft and gentle, “What has happened to your family all this time?”

Harry spoke about history, with glacial calm.

“My family has traveled for centuries.
The legend of the Deathly Hallows has made us prey, not hunters.
Every generation, someone sought the power they thought was ours.
And for this… we have lost brothers, fathers, mothers."

Silence.
No one dared to interrupt.

Lestrange took a sip of wine.
"And yet you have returned… with glory."

Harry smiled, but it was a sharp smile.

“We're back because it's time for someone to break the chain.
The magic of our world does not belong to fear.
It belongs to the control.”

Nobody breathed.

Then, inevitably, the slimy voice of Abraxas Malfoy:

“Just one curiosity, Lord Peverell.
Your sister does not look like you at all.
How come?"

The question was poison.
A direct attack.
An attempt to discredit them.

Harry didn't bat an eyelid.

“My mother died protecting me from a dark wizard who wanted to kill me.
My father remarried. Hermione is my half-sister."

Lestrange nodded, Rosier approved.
It was a clean, aristocratic, unassailable answer.

Malfoy opened his mouth to retort—
But it was Tom who spoke, in a persuasive voice:

"It doesn't matter the blood, if the magic is strong."

The room went silent.
Tom supported Harry.

No.
Tom craved Harry.

Harry looked at him closely for the first time, his eyes green as poison and storm.

“I agree, Mr. Riddle.”

Just four words.

Tom trembled.

Harry continued, his voice low, hypnotic:

“Blood is a shell.
Magic is the weapon."

Tom closed his eyes for a moment, as if those words were caresses on his skin.

When Harry resumed talking to the others, Tom followed him with his gaze, silent, conquered.

And that's when he understood.
Hadrian Peverell was not like the others.
He wasn't seductive, he was not impressionable.
He was a king among men.

—

The snow fell slowly, silently, like white ash from the sky.
In the study at Peverell Manor, the air smelled of ancient parchment and ink tar.

Harry and Hermione sat at a huge dark oak table, surrounded by books of wizarding law, old Ministry decrees, archaic treaties dealing with house rights, seats, legacies.

Hours of reading, calculations, analysis.
Until silence.

Harry closed the last book.

"Here we are."

Hermione looked up.
Her eyes shone with intelligence and restlessness.

"Did we find what we were looking for?"

Harry touched a yellowed page with a finger.

"The Law of the Representation of Houses. Last updated: 1724."
He looks up, his eyes hard as steel.
"It's old, obsolete. We have the right to propose an amendment."

Hermione stared at him, breathless: she understood.

Harry spoke with merciless calm:

“Pureblood houses hold seats by inheritance, not by merit.
The magical world doesn't change because it's built not to."
He leaned forward, his voice low and venomous.
“We will propose that part of the Wizengamot no longer be hereditary… but elective.”

Hermione remained silent.
Then, slowly, her smile widened.

“Harry… it's brilliant.
They will believe they will gain from it—that the most influential will always win.
But the people will have a voice.
New blood, new ideas… a nightmare for the old aristocracy.”

Harry nodded.

“For now the proposal will seem harmless.
A progressive, elegant, modern act.
And no one will be able to openly oppose it without appearing to be a tyrant."

Hermione stood up, starting to pace, speaking quickly:

“And when new members join… we will be able to pass other laws.
Laws on work, on magical rights, on equality.
One step at a time."

Harry looked at her with an intensity that made her stop.

“We cannot change the world by force.
But we can make them believe that the change was their idea.»

Hermione sat down next to him again.

“We'll have to be… perfect.
Smiles, courtesy, diplomacy.
And a knife behind your back, just in case."

Harry took her hand.

“We already are.”

Silence.
Only the wind against the windows.

Then Hermione added, with ferocious strategy:

“We'll need an ally in the Wizengamot.
Credible.
Powerful.
Someone who isn't afraid of change… or who fears it enough to follow us."

Harry nodded, his gaze hardening.

“Orion Black.”
A name that cut through the night.

Hermione inhaled slowly.
“He's fascinated by you.
And be wary of Malfoy.
Yes… we could convince him.”

Harry closed the book and pushed it away.

“We start tomorrow.
First formal proposal to the Ministry.
Then… alliances.
Tom will be the most dangerous pawn, but also the most useful."

Hermione stared at him.

“You will use him”

Harry answered in a small voice.

“No.
I will guide him.
And finally, when the time comes…
I will destroy him."

The snow continued to fall, slow, silent.
The night was preparing for war.
And the Peverells had just moved their first piece on the board.

The next day, the entire Ministry of Magic seemed to be shaken by an invisible wind.

The Peverells were returning.
Not as relics of the past.
But like an unstoppable force.

Harry walked through the grey marble halls, Hermione at his side.
Wherever they passed, the wizards stopped to watch: some fascinated, some fearful, all attentive.

There was a silent, regal, merciless dominance in Harry's gaze.

As the two passed through the door of the Wizengamot Room, the buzz died down.
The pureblood Lords were already seated, dressed in fine coats and false smiles.

The Peverell seat was there: tall, imposing, almost at the level of the Minister himself.

Harry walked up the steps without hesitation.

When he spoke, his voice filled the room.

“Honourable members of the Wizengamot.
I am Hadrian Peverell, and as heir to my house, I bring a formal proposal to improve this Council… and our future.”

The echo was cold.

Orion Black leaned forward, eyes curious.
Malfoy curled his lip, already suspicious.
Tom, sitting not as a Lord but as Orion's guest of honor, didn't take his eyes off Harry even to breathe.

Harry opened the parchment.

“I propose the revision of the Law on the Representation of Houses.
In addition to the hereditary seats, which will remain in place, a section of elective seats will be established, voted on by the magical citizens.”

A shockwave went through the room.

The murmurs.
Agitation.
Scandal withheld.

A masterstroke.

Harry continued with a thin smile:

“This does not take away power from the ancient families.
Elections will be rare, controlled, and reserved for the most influential wizards among the people.
A gesture of openness… and modernity.”

Every word was a velvet-coated blade.

Lestrange whispered something to Rosier.
Malfoy was pale with disappointment.
Tom looked on like a collector who had just found a jewel.

And then Orion Black stood up.

The room fell silent.

“Lord Peverell, your proposal is… bold.”
A slow, fascinated smile.
“But foresight should never be stifled by fear.
I… approve.”

Louder murmurs. Dismay.

And one after another, some Lords nodded.
Not out of conviction… but so as not to be left behind.

Harry bowed his head slightly, with deadly grace.

“Thank you, Lord Black.”

And at that moment, Hadrian Peverell was no longer a newcomer.
He was a strategist, a power, an uncrowned king.

When the session ended, the Minister attempted to congratulate him, but Harry greeted him with distant politeness.
He wasn't looking for favors.
He gave lessons.

Tom touched his forearm as they walked out, almost without realizing it.
A small, intimate gesture.
Harry gave him a quick look… and left him there, thirsty for attention.

It was Orion who joined them, his dark cloak billowing behind him.

"Lord Peverell," he said in a low voice, "your mind is a weapon the likes of which London has never seen. If it is not too soon…I would likeI'd like to invite you to my house this evening. To talk about... alliances."

Harry studied him for a moment.

An intelligent man.
Young man.
Fascinated by him.
Far from Malfoy's madness, but close to power.

Perfect.

“I would be honored, Lord Black,” Harry replied, bowing slightly.
"I'll be with you at sunset."

Orion smiled, and strode away with a confident step.

Hermione looked at him from the side, her voice low.

“He’s attracted to you.”

Harry replied coldly:

"Perfect."

Hermione's eyes widened for a moment… then she smiled softly.

The Peverells were conquering London.

Not with magic.

With the mind.

Grimmauld Place was no longer a gloomy and abandoned place.
It was an elite fortress, lit by silver candelabra, polished mirrors, and ancient banners.
Harry entered without hesitation, with the stern grace that had become his trademark.

Walburga Black descended the stairs like a queen sacrificed to her desires:
dressed in black velvet, eyes sparkling.

“Lord Peverell,” she whispered, touching his arm.
"It's our honor to have you here."

Harry gave her a polite, flawless… and completely devoid of warmth smile.

Tom watched them from the shadows of the living room.
The cold, motionless gaze.
Harry didn't even look at him.

The game had begun.

The dinner was a political theater.

A long mahogany table, fine dishes, silver service.
Orion sat next to Harry, almost too close.
Walburga on the other side, leaning with her chin on her hand, sighed at every word of the young Peverell.

Tom sat a few seats away, but he didn't look away.

Harry could feel it.
It was like an invisible thread.

Orion spoke of laws, of houses, of the future.

Malfoy was silent.

"Tradition must be honored," he said, pouring Harry some fine wine, "but without adaptation, we die. You have brought a breath of modernity... without insulting our world."

Harry bowed his head, a smile of ice and honey.

"Magical society has been stagnant for too long. Purity lies not in isolation... but in survival."

Orion looked at him as if he were a prodigy.

"I'd like to support you. Publicly, if you wish."

Tom's fingers gripped the glass until it nearly broke.

Harry sipped his wine slowly.

“Your trust honors me, Lord Black.
And it will be… remembered.”

Orion smiled.
Walburga trembled slightly, enraptured.

And finally Tom spoke.

His voice was calm, but jealousy cracked it between the consonants.

“It’s amazing, Hadrian… how you can enchant everyone with so few words.”
A thin smile. "Some call it charisma. I'd say... control."

Harry looked at him with elegant laziness.

“It's the same thing they say about you, Tom.
But I don't control anyone.
I just show what I am… and let others choose whether to burn.”

A shiver ran across the table.

Tom slowly put his glass down.
Eyes fixed on Harry.

"And you… are you burning?"

Harry smiled. Slow. Deadly.

“Only those who deserve it.”

The silence was as thick as a potion.

Orion coughed, trying to break the tension.

"Hadrian," he said, "I'd like to show you our private library, if you'd like. There are books you might be interested in... and perhaps... ideas to share."

Tom stiffened his back.

Harry stood up with icy grace.

“With pleasure.”

Walburga almost melted into her chair.
Tom remained still… but his eyes were a storm.

The Black library was paneled in dark wood and ancient silence.
Orion closed the door, standing a short distance away from Harry.

“You are different from any other Lord,” he murmured.
“You should know that House Black supports men destined to change history.”

Harry looked at him with a look that could be kind… or deadly.

“And Tom?” he asked, with poisoned calm.

Orion hesitated only for a moment.

“He's brilliant.
Fascinating even…
But too… unpredictable.
You are… precision."

Harry took a step closer.

A small choice.
But Orion felt it as a promise.

“I'll tell you this,” Harry whispered.
“If House Black supports me, the Peverells will not forget.
And our alliance… could last for generations."

Orion swallowed.

Walburga would have collapsed at his feet.
Orion was an honorable man… but he was not immune to enchantment.

“That’s all I want.”

Harry held out his hand.
Orion took it, holding it with fervent respect.

The door opened.

Tom was in the doorway.

Eyes almost black.
Fixed.
Furious.

Harry looked at him as one might a magnificent… and trapped animal.

The game had just begun.

— Tom —

The library was silent, but Tom heard the noise.

Not real.
Not physical.
An internal noise.

Like something cracking.

Orion held Hadrian's hand.
Too long.
Too close.

And Hadrian didn't back down.

He didn't look at him with annoyance.
But with complicity.

Tom didn't remember breathing as he watched them.

The Black Lord stepped back, embarrassed by his own audacity.
Harry looked up and fixed his eyes on Tom.

Not surprised.
Not irritation.

That look.

That look that Tom had already understood was a sharp blade, hidden in velvet.

“They were looking for you in the lounge,” Tom said, his voice perfectly controlled.
The only clue to his condition were his fingers, clenched so tightly that the nails were digging into his skin.

Hadrian didn't move an inch.

"And you?" he asked, without any kindness. "Were you looking for me?"

Tom would have answered “no” in any other context.
Tom never told the truth, except as a matter of strategy.

But his mouth betrayed his mind.

"Yes."

Silence.

Orion looked down, as if he realized he had been excluded by something invisible.

Hadrian waved him goodbye. Polite. Perfect. Lethal.

Orion walked out, closing the door behind him.

Tom and Hadrian were left alone.

The room was large.
Yet Tom felt the walls tighten.

Hadrian walked along the shelves, brushing the spines of the books with an elegant gesture, almost sensual in its calm.

“Lord Black is… suggestible,” he murmured.
"And influential. His alliance is… useful."

Tom reacted as if he had been hit with a whip.

“Are you planning on… using it?”

Hadrian turned around, slowly.
The green eyes, too intense.

“I intend to use anyone who tries to use me.”

Was it a threat?
No.
It was pure honesty.

Tom felt a chill and a hot shiver at the same time.

Hadrian was like him.
But worse.
Or rather.

"I thought you would prefer me," said Tom.

It was a mistake.
One he would never have committed.

Yet he said it.

Hadrian approached.
One step.
Another.

Tom didn't back down.
He didn't succeed.

“Why should I?” Hadrian asked, with a tiny smile.
“I just met you.”

Tom felt jealousy tighten in his throat.

It was a primitive sensation, unsuitable to his intellect.
He had never tried it.
Never.

And worse: he couldn't control it.

"Because I fascinate you."
His voice was low.
Almost a growl.
"Because you're interested in the strong. And I—"

Hadrian spoke over his words.
Whispered. Hot. Sharp.

“I’m interested in those who don’t ask to be chosen.”

Tom remained still.

Hadrian turned away as if the argument was over, as if he had already won.

But Tom wasn't made to accept defeat.
Not in anything.
Never.

He grabbed him by the wrist.

Not strong enough to be disrespectful.
But enough to keep him from walking away.

Harry stopped.
He turned his gaze towards his hand.

Then towards Tom.

Slowly.

Tom realized that no one had ever looked at him that way:

Not like a shiny creature.
Not as a threat.
Like a man who could be… broken.

Hadrian spoke softly.

"Don't touch me without permission."

Tom released his grip instantly.
For the first time in his life, not out of fear.
But out of obedience.

Captured.
Without magic.
Without justification.

Hadrian leaned slightly toward his ear, his breath light as scented poison.

“If you want my attention, Tom…
conquer it.
Don't beg for it."

Then he turned his back on him, opened the door and walked out.

Tom was left alone in the library.

And he discovered something that hurt like Avada Kedavra in his heart:

He wanted his attention.
He wanted his mind.
He wanted his voice.

He wanted him.

Not out of ambition.
Not for power.

By desire.

And Tom Riddle realized, trembling with fury and fascination, that for the first time in his life…

He wasn't the hunter.

He was prey.

The library door closed behind him with a sound too soft for the storm in his chest.

Tom walked straight ahead, not looking at anyone.
It was the only way not to betray the tension in his hands, the clear and precise anger.
The Blacks' dinner guests were leaving the house.

None of this mattered.

Tom didn't stop until he reached the edge of the hall, where the shadows were deeper.

He needed to think.

He needed to understand.

He needed to—

«Tom!»

Malfoy.

Perfect.
On the annoyance scale, it was just below a drunk house-elf.

Abraxas approached with an elegant step and an arrogant smile, the same smile he used when he thought he had discovered something valuable.

"What do you think of Lord Peverell?" he asked, lowering his voice conspiratorially. "I'd say all of London is at his mercy."

Tom remained still.

That sentence shouldn't have irritated him so much.

Nevertheless…

"He's… interesting," he replied, weighing every syllable. "Calm. Controlled. Dangerous."

Malfoy laughed softly. "Oh, you're not scared, are you?"

Fear.

Ridiculous word.

Tom turned, looked him in the eye, and Malfoy immediately stopped laughing.

“I fear no one,” he said.

And as long as he thought it… it had always been true.

The disturbing news was that Tom wasn't sure he believed it now.

Malfoy adjusted his jacket, pretending not to feel threatened.

"I noticed you were spending a lot of time with him. Did you talk?"

Tom felt a thrill of jealousy poison his tongue.

They were talking.
They looked at each other.
And Hadrian never smiled like that with others.

When Tom spoke, his voice was calm, precise, and sharp:

"It's none of your business."

Malfoy's eyes widened. "Tom… are you okay?"

No.

Yes.

He didn't know.

Tom ran a hand through his hair, slowly, as if smoothing away the frustration.

"The Peverells are not like the others," he said softly. "They do not desire what everyone desires. They do not seek obsequiousness, they do not seek obvious power. They are..."

Another word he had never used.

“Inaccessible.”

Malfoy glared at him. "Why would you care? There are more useful families. The Blacks, the Greengrasses... even the Rosiers."

Tom stared at him.

A slow, measured, murderous gaze.

"Because what is difficult to obtain is worth more than what is obtained immediately."

Malfoy opened his mouth to reply, but Tom didn't give him time.
He turned without saying goodbye and headed towards the exit of the hall, wrapped in his own lucid fury.

Every step was a decision.

Every breath was an oath.

Hadrian Peverell would not escape for long.

Tom wasn't used to chasing, but he would learn.
Because in that moment it was clear — like a curse set in stone:

If Hadrian wanted to be conquered, Tom would conquer him.
If he wanted to be dominated, Tom would dominate him.
If he wanted to be destroyed… Tom would destroy him.

And maybe, for the first time,
Tom Riddle wanted something more than just power.

He wanted him.

The hunt was on.

Chapter Text

Hermione would never admit out loud that Harry had been right.
Not in such a detestable way.

Yet, walking through the lavender-scented corridors of Rosier Manor, surrounded by polite laughter and razor-sharp gazes, she had to make do:
real politics did not live in the halls of the Wizengamot.

They lived here.
Among fine porcelain, silk fans and whispered conversations behind steaming cups of tea.

When Harry had suggested to “coax the girls,” Hermione had thought it was a punishment.
Now she understood that it was the opposite: it was a weapon.

Because, in the world of magical nobility, women could not vote, nor govern… but they knew how to destroy.
A reputation, a marriage, an alliance.
With a sentence, with a smile, with a lie.

And they've been doing it for centuries.

Hermione put down her spoon, watching the group of young purebloods study her with feline attention.

She had been invited every day for the last five.
Black Manor, Greengrass Hall and now Rosier Manor.

And it wasn't just out of politeness.

Harry had started bringing her to Wizengamot sessions, placing her beside him, in plain sight.
A simple, yet devastating gesture.

The first message was as clear as a polished blade:

Lord Peverell is progressive.
Respect his sister.
He will respect his wife.

Many ladies had begun to look at their husbands with a poisonous air.

The second message was even more strategic:

Whoever Hermione married,
would have gained Lord Peverell's alliance.

This had turned afternoon tea into big game hunting.

The girls stared at her like they would a sleeping dragon:
with curiosity, with desire, with terror.

"Lady Peverell," trilled Astoria Greengrass—young, pretty, sharp smile—"your brother has rejected three suitors this week. Should we be worried?"

Hermione sipped gracefully.
Harry had advised her not to show emotion.

“A Peverell never chooses in haste.”
She answered softly. "His interest isn't beauty... but intellect."

A murmur ran through the living room.
Three girls stiffened.
Two looked down, their pride wounded.

Hermione hid a smile behind her cup.

It was almost funny.

"And you, Lady Peverell?" asked another young woman, with a smile too sweet to be sincere. "Don't you feel pressured to... find a husband?"

This was a lunge.
A provocation.

Hermione put the cup down slowly.

“Oh, absolutely not.”
Her lips curved into a cold smile.
"I'm a Peverell. We don't need husbands to gain power."

Silence.

A dense, incredulous, scandalized silence.

And, in the midst of that silence,
Hermione realized that Harry was right:

women did not have a seat.

They had influence.

And she would use it to the last drop.

“Lady Peverell, you must tell us more of your story!”

The voices overlapped, enthusiastic and hungry.
Hermione realized that this was the perfect time to plant seeds.
Seeds that would have sprouted in living rooms…
and then in their husbands' beds…
and finally in the Wizengamot.

She cast her gaze upon the young noblewomen, modulating her voice in a perfect balance between modesty and venom.

"Our history isn't as refined as yours," she began with a faint smile. "We didn't grow up amid balls and receptions. We had no governesses, no courtly education. We don't have impeccable etiquette."

She feigned a little sigh, theatrical and delicate.

“Our life has been… a constant escape.”

The girls lean forward, curious.
Rosier clutches her fan, Greengrass holds her breath.

Hermione continued:

“We were chased by those who wanted the Deathly Hallows.
We have seen castles collapse, families exterminated…
And every time, Harry saved us."

A silence fell, intense.

Hermione smiled—soft on the surface, sharp underneath.

“My brother is compassionate.
Gentle.
He's the boy who helps a wounded elf, who offers hospitality to a nameless wizard..."

Then she tilted her head slightly, and her voice changed tone: dark velvet, sharp.

“…but he is also the man I saw kill to protect me."

A shiver ran through the living room.
The younger ones widened their eyes.
The most astute understood: that innocent smile was a threat.

“Harry saw death very close up, you know?”
Hermione intertwined her fingers gracefully.
“I could say that… he dances with it.”

She paused, letting the image settle, taking root in their minds.

“That’s why anyone who wants to marry him… has to be very, very strong.”

Astoria swallowed.
“In… in what sense, Lady Peverell?”

Hermione smiled, like someone telling a macabre tale to children.

“Because Harry doesn't belong to any woman.
If he ever gets a wife, she'll have to share him."

Eyebrows rose. Fans stopped in mid-air.

Hermione lowered her voice, venomous as a whispered spell:

“With Death.”

The living room erupted in shocked murmurs, dilated eyes, electric shivers.
Some girls straightened out, as if they had discovered a forbidden and irresistible side of the young Lord Peverell.

Hermione took a honey biscuit, calmly as if it were any other snack.

She had said it.
And they would remember every syllable.

In living rooms, in corridors, in double beds.
And the husbands would understand—without ever hearing it from her mouth—that to oppose the Peverells was to touch the will of Death itself.

Hermione smiled, perfect and polite.

She had just conquered the most powerful weapon in pureblood society:

fear disguised as fascination.

As the buzz died down and the girls returned to their shocked whispers, Hermione sensed a presence approaching with silent but determined steps.

Aysia Greengrass.

Not Astoria — too young.
Not the mother — too busy judging.

Aysia was the firstborn.
Elegant, controlled, with clear eyes that were not dazzled by the gold.

One who was observing.
One that understood.

She bowed with impeccable grace, but not with the servile air Hermione had seen in the others.

"Lady Peverell," she said respectfully. "It was… enlightening to listen to you."

Hermione returned the bow with aristocratic restraint.

“Lady Greengrass.”

Aysia sat down next to her, maintaining her composure and, at the same time, a prudent distance—as if she were sitting next to an elegant beast that, if angered, could use the porcelain as a blunt weapon.

“I must confess,” Aysia began, lowering her voice, “that many here have difficulty understanding your… strength.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow.

"Is my strength scary?"

“It scares those who don’t understand it,” Aysia answered with extreme honesty.

Hermione smiled, appreciating the sincerity.

For a few seconds the two women studied each other, like chess players trying to figure out the value of their opponent's queen.

Then Aysia added, almost fearfully:

“There’s something else I should tell you.”
She took a deep breath.
“Lord Abraxas Malfoy… is very interested in you.”

Hermione burst into a light laugh.

A laugh that none of those present could ever have interpreted correctly.

In her head, two images overlapped:

• Abraxas Malfoy, young, elegant, convinced he can achieve anything.
  
  
• Draco Malfoy, future version, arrogant, spoiled, terrified of the name Hermione Granger.
  
  

A part of her found it hilarious.

"Oh, Abraxas Malfoy," she said with gentle irony. "How... predictable."

Aysia stared at her, surprised by that complete lack of fear.

"You must be careful," she murmured. "The Malfoys always get what they want. Money, alliances, marriages, influence... if he's set his sights on you—"

Hermione put her cup down, her gaze sharp and calm.

“ Let him try.”

Aysia paled slightly.

That tone wasn't arrogance.
It was power.
Real power.
Power that didn't ask permission.

Hermione tilted her head, an elegantly cruel expression on her lips.

“Abraxas is used to women bending over backwards to please.”
Her eyes shone with an icy calm.
"I don't give in."

The words fell like a blade on the marble floor.

Aysia felt Lady Peverell's magic rising in the air—a shiver, a breath, an echo of ancient power.

It wasn't noisy.
It wasn't ostentatious.
It was simply undeniable.

As if the room had just remembered who the Peverells were.

Aysia nodded.

"I understand," she murmured softly. "You're not… like the others."

Hermione replied with a smile that it wasn't dangerous.
It was lethal.

“No, Lady Greengrass. I am not.”

Aysia bowed again — but this time, not out of courtesy.

Out of respect.

And out of fear.

Hermione watched the other girls look at her with new eyes: curiosity, fascination, terror.
And she knew with certainty that the message had taken root:

Lord Peverell's sister was no pawn.
She was a queen.

— Harry—

The excuse was simple, elegant, and unassailable:
obtain his and Hermione's academic records.
The Goblins had every legal detail, every trail, every date sorted out.
No one could have questioned the existence of Lord Hadrian and Lady Hermione Peverell.

Not even Hogwarts.

The castle hall welcomed him with the same smell as always:
ancient stone, floor wax, parchment.
Harry's heart—hidden, protected, raised in war—jumped a little.

For just one brief moment, he remembered what it meant to be a boy.

Then Lord Peverell returned, a ruler sculpted by power.

Passing students stopped to look at him.
Some bowed—the children of Purebloods, those whose parents were intelligent enough to recognize the winds of change.

Harry continued walking as if he had always belonged in those corridors.

In some ways, it was true.

When he knocked on the vice principal's office, the door opened by itself.

Dumbledore's voice—younger, more forcefully authoritative—greeted him.

“ Enter, Lord Peverell.”

Harry strode forward, his back straight, his noble mask perfect, flawless.
But something in my chest was tingling, like a melancholy that wouldn't let itself be forgotten.

Dumbledore was behind the desk, his beard shorter, his eyes less tired… but already bright with dangerous curiosity.

"It's an honor to have you at Hogwarts," he said with genuine warmth. "The school is delighted to welcome a Peverell into its halls."

Harry allowed himself a polite smile.

“As much as our family circumstances have dictated secrecy, it was inevitable that we would return to the wizarding world.”

Dumbledore watched him carefully.

"I've heard a lot about you. You won the Wizengamot in a month. Not everyone can do that."

Harry inclined his head, with perfect… and false humility.

"I haven't conquered anything. I've simply offered the guidance the Ministry has long requested."

It was the right answer.
Diplomatic.
Unassailable.

Dumbledore laughed.

"Humble, strategic... and a terribly quick learner. Hogwarts cherishes these qualities."

Harry felt his heart sink.
How many times had he wished, as a boy, to hear something like that?
Now he was receiving it… from a man who didn't know who he really was.

“I have been told,” Dumbledore continued, “that you wish to have your N.E.W.T. documents and those of your sister.”

"Yes, Principal. We need to formalize our social and political position."

Dumbledore stood up and handed him the certificates himself—a gesture far from casual.
An offer of trust.
A first attempt to get closer.

"Before you go," the vice-principal said calmly, "may I offer you a cup of tea? I'd like to... get to know you better."

Harry looked at him.
Behind the blue eyes, he saw intelligence.
The hunger for knowledge.
Concern for a young Lord who was rewriting British politics.

And underneath all this…
a spark of fear.

Harry smiled, and it was a smile that didn't belong to a boy.

"Of course, Professor. It's rare for a wise man to wish to converse with a boy like me."

Dumbledore studied him.
Not as a student would observe.
But as someone looking at a puzzle.

"You are no boy at all, Lord Peverell. And I fear you know it only too well."

Harry looked down, his modesty masterfully played.

Then he raised his cup… and between a sip of tea and a blink of an eye, he cast the first net.

“Tell me, Professor,” he asked with measured innocence, “what do you think of the idea… that a wizard might desire immortality?”

Dumbledore stopped breathing for a moment.

Not enough to seem alarmed.
But enough for Harry to see.

Perfect.

The hunt for the Horcruxes had begun.

Dumbledore slowly put the cup down, as if the glass might shatter between his fingers.

“What do you mean by this, Lord Peverell?”

Harry tilted his head slightly, as if he had said something insignificant.

"During the years my sister and I were forced to live in hiding, we encountered many things. Dark wizards, curses, forbidden relics."

Harry continued with studied nonchalance:

"One of these was a… particular object. Inside it was something I perceived as… fragments of consciousness. Of spirit."

“Dark objects that… contained a person’s soul?” Dumbledore repeated, his voice calm, but too calm to be natural.
The Professor was not surprised.
He was alerted.

Dumbledore's eyes grew more piercing.
His silence was very attentive.

Harry smiled softly, harmlessly, almost curiously.

"I've always wondered if it was possible for a soul to be... split. I've always had a sensitivity to magic. Ever since I was a child. I've always sensed the things you can't see. Shadows. Presences. Vestiges of magic left behind by others."

The vice principal closed his eyes for a moment.
It wasn't a theatrical gesture.
He was a man who had just heard a truth he didn't want to hear.

Harry shrugged, with lethal ease.

And then, with the same innocent tone with which one comments on the weather:

“The night of my debut… I felt that presence again.”

Dumbledore's eyes widened.

It wasn't shock.

It was fear.

“By… anyone present?” he asked softly.

Harry touched the cup, without drinking it.
Light, controlled fingers.

"I'm not sure. But I'd recognize it anywhere."

The air between them stiffened.
Silence, thick as an uncast spell.

Then Harry, as if he had just remembered a silly detail, added:

"It's a magic... cold. Ancient. Desperate. A part of someone who refused to die."

Dumbledore swallowed.

His gentle smile was gone.

“Lord Peverell… if what you have sensed is indeed what I fear, the entire wizarding world is in danger.”

Harry looked up, and for just a second his true nature showed.

Wisdom.
Lethality.
An experience no twenty-year-old should have.

“I know, Professor.”

The feigned innocence fell like an uncomfortable cloak.

"That's why I came back."

Dumbledore remained still.

For the first time, Harry saw the man behind the legend:
hungry for answers, frightened by his own silence, and aware that he was in the presence of someone who was playing a bigger game than him.

“If you ever encounter that object again… or whoever created it…”
The Professor's voice trembled slightly.
"Please tell me."

Harry smiled.

And it was a beautiful, kind smile… and absolutely devoid of mercy.

“Certainly, Professor.”

Perfect lie.

As he left the office, Harry ran a hand down the familiar corridors, thinking not of what he had achieved…

…but to the certainty that Dumbledore, from that moment on, would begin to seek the darkness without ever suspecting he was looking the young Lord Peverell in the eye.

Because at this time, Harry was not the Chosen One.

He was the Hunter.

By the time Harry passed through the wrought-iron gates of Peverell Manor, night had already fallen.
The air smelled of rain and ancient magic.

As he crossed the threshold, he heard voices coming from the great hall.

A male voice, irritated, with wounded pride.

"Lady Peverell, I assure you that my family only intends to show you the respect you deserve. It is customary for a lady of your station—"

Hermione's response came as sharp as a perfectly cast spell.

“Lord Malfoy, please don’t misunderstand me: I have no need for your tradition.”

Harry smiled, remaining in the shadows of the corridor.
Hermione in mode Peverell,  was a spectacle.

“My lady—” Malfoy tried, in that nasal voice full of aristocratic superiority.

Hermione interrupted him.

"I am at Peverell Manor, not in your parlor. I am not your guest. This is my castle, and my word is law within its walls."

Malfoy blanched, but tried to maintain a modicum of dignity.

«I didn't mean to disrespect. But it is customary that a courtship beginnings with-"

"A courtship?"

Hermione raised an eyebrow.
Elegant, glacial.

«Lord Malfoy, if you think that strouting like a peacock and extolling your importance is a form of courtship… I fear you are disastrously misinformed."

Malfoy's ears turned red.

Harry almost laughed.

“I… just wanted to show you I’m interested.”
His voice trembled. No one spoke to the Malfoys like that. No one.

“Interest?” Hermione took a step forward, her eyes hard. “You’re not…interested in me. You’re interested in my title, the power, and the possibility of tying your house to the Peverells. And you didn't even have the good sense to disguise it."

Malfoy opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

“Besides,” Hermione added with a smirk that was pure noble cruelty, “if you think I’d be impressed by a man who bows his head to the Greengrasses and runs after the Rosiers… you don’t know the woman you’re trying to win at all.”

Deadly silence.

Malfoy looked somewhere between offended and terrified.

It was then that Harry decided to show himself.

“Lord Malfoy,” he announced as he entered, his voice calm and velvety.

Malfoy jumped as if he felt a spell rise behind him.

“My lord!” he stammered, bowing.

Harry placed a hand on Hermione's shoulder, a gesture both affectionate and possessive, as if to say:
She is under my protection, under my title, under my power.

“I hope my sister wasn’t too honest with you,” Harry said, with a smile that wasn’t a smile.

Hermione crossed her arms triumphantly.

Malfoy swallowed hard.

"No, my lord. Just… just a misunderstanding."

"Oh, I'm afraid not," Harry replied. "Hermione almost never misunderstands."

Another blow to his pride.

Malfoy bowed stiffly.

“I… ask your forgiveness if I have overstepped the bounds of courtesy.”

Hermione stared at him like a queen who pardons a subject just because it's fun to watch him beg.

Harry added, his voice low but sharp:

"I hope this lesson helps you in the future. The women of our family aren't wooed with bragging rights and posturing. They're won over with honor... and courage."

Malfoy bowed again, almost stumbling.

"Good evening."

And he ran away.

As the door closed, Hermione sighed and looked at Harry with a fierce smile.

“You had fun, didn’t you?”

Harry laughed.

“It’s always a pleasure to see you bring down a Malfoy without using your wand.”

Hermione sank onto the sofa, tired but pleased.

"How did it go at Hogwarts?"

Harry sat down next to her, his eyes darker than usual.

“Dumbledore knows about the Horcruxes.”

Hermione stopped breathing.

"Did he understand?"

"No. I insinuated. Now he'll search, but he won't know where to look. He's scared... and he's a very dangerous man when he's scared."

Hermione nodded slowly.

Then Harry added:

“It’s time to start the hunt.”

And for the first time since they had arrived in 1946, Hermione saw the same light in Harry's eyes that Tom had seen at the ball:

the ecstasy of death.

The library at Peverell Manor breathed a sigh of relief in the night. Outside, the snow had stopped falling; inside, the firelight cast long shadows on the parchments, like war plans.

Harry and Hermione faced each other across the table, surrounded by notes, maps, Hogwarts records, and the few papers the Goblins had given them. No heroic scenes, no duels: just reasoning, plotting, numbers.

"We can't just go at random," said Harry. "Not like reckless teenagers. We have to figure out how to destroy the Horcruxes without Tom noticing."

Hermione nodded, her eyes cold. "I agree. First: we need to establish which Horcruxes already exist—and where to look for their most likely hiding places."

Harry placed a finger on a list they had made.

“We know that the Diary is already a Horcrux and so is the Gaunt ring, we need to find out if Tom has already obtained the Locket.”

Hermione took the pen and wrote, with surgical calm. "As far as we know, Tom got that Horcrux from Hepzibah Smith.”

Harry smiled, that smile that was a warning. "Tom is clearly attracted to me, and like I said, I'll use that to my advantage."

Hermione had no emotional reaction; just a plan. "I will continue to build bonds between the young wives and future mothers of the Wizengamot: I will influence the conversations, I will move sympathies, I will create a climate favorable to requests for access to archives and family donations. Women don't vote, but they decide who will marry whom. Their husbands will bring our motions to the floor as 'the people's' ideas. We must ensure that Tom has no political support."

Harry clapped his hands once, dryly. "Perfect. You bend the flesh of society; I bend the bones of power. Within the Wizengamot, I'll continue to play my game. Orion is quite fascinated by me."

Hermione looked up. "Law and drama. But we need a field agent who knows the practical horrors. I can handle the social movements, the interviews, the women; you can work on Tom. But you don't just have to seduce him: you have to make him show off, he has to show off what he has. Curiosity will consume him."

"And he'll consume it properly," Harry said. "I'll make him feel important, then I'll suggest a topic of conversation that will prompt him to talk about meaningful objects."

Hermione added without hesitation, "We also need to work out the technical measures to destroy the Horcruxes. I don't want the Horcrux to be exposed and then disappear. If we find an artifact, we need to make sure it's 'found' by someone who wants to destroy it, someone like Dumbledore, but be careful: we don't want anyone to know too much ahead of time."

Harry leaned forward, even colder. "Dumbledore is useful as a guinea pig and a mirror: we'll use him to guide his research, to make him look in directions that confirm our narrative. But we won't tell him everything. If he learns too much, it could complicate our plans. We must maintain control of the information."

Hermione gritted her teeth. "All right. Division of tasks, then: me—salons, social manipulation, opening channels in women's clubs and families; you—emotional infiltration of Tom, and legislative work at the Wizengamot to gain more and more support. As for Dumbledore, we will ‘suggest' where to find the Horcruxes.”

Harry nodded. "What if Tom gets wind of the plan?"

Hermione laughed, but it was a mirthless laugh. "Then we use him. He himself is a lever: we'll let him think we're courting his favor, we'll nail him with words he can't take back. Vanity makes men predictable."

Harry stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the sleeping village. Its profile, against the moon, was stern.

“First move,” he said finally. “I push him to confide in me privately harbor to reveal a cherished object. I will casually mention to Dumbledore that my 'magical sensitivity' has detected an object and offer to destroy it at Peverell Castle."

Hermione took Harry's hand and squeezed it just once. No affection. A pact.

"This is a war of precision," she whispered. "Not of fury. If we win, we'll do it piece by piece."

Harry smiled, cruel and serene. "What if we lose?"

"We won’t lose," she replied. "Not now. Not with the Peverell name behind us."

They exchanged a look that was no longer that of loving brother and sister: it was command.

Outside, the night seemed deeper. Inside, on that circular table, the first move had already been made.

 —-Tom—

Tom had received the invitation in a way that was both elegant and irritating:
a folded parchment with a black seal, no title, no motif.

“Meet me. Grimmauld Place.
If you can find the house, you can find me.”
– H.P.

Tom smiled. A challenge.

The garden was cold, bathed in a silver haze.
Grimmauld Place was not a house: it was a monument to the ancient, the dark, the pure.
Perfectly suited to Blacks.
Perfectly suited to a man like Peverell.

Inside the house another gala dinner was taking place.

And here he is.

Hadrian was leaning against the blackened trunk of an old tree.
Hair loose on his shoulders, a dark cloak that seemed part of the night itself.
He didn't turn around right away.
He didn't need to see to know.

Tom hated how much he wanted to be seen.

“Lord Peverell.”
His voice came out deeper, more controlled than expected.

“Lord Riddle,” Harry replied – without looking at him. “Or do you prefer ‘Orion Black’s favorite’?”

Tom clenched his jaw.

“I didn’t think you were interested in gossip.”

"I'm not interested. But they make you… predictable."

Finally he turned around.
Green eyes like forbidden spells.
Tom felt his stomach tighten unbearably.

"You asked to see me," Tom said, his smile returning. "Or perhaps you wanted my company more than you care to admit."

Harry studied him, slowly, as if assessing how much blood would be needed for a sacrifice.

“I wanted to see how far you were willing to go.”

"For what?"
Tom came closer, just two steps.

“For power? For knowledge? For me?” Hadrian said with a cruel smile.

“I am no longer Orion’s favorite, it seems that place has been taken by you Lord Peverell.”

A moment of silence.
And then Peverell laughed.
Not like a boy.
Like a king.

"Is that what's bothering you? You think I'm building an empire under Orion's nose... and that he hasn't put you at the center of his plans?"

Tom freezed.

Harry continued, cutting him off with delicate, merciless words:

“He looks at you with admiration… but not with respect.
He desires you like a collector desires a statue.
Me? I don't collect.
I'm in charge."

Tom swallowed.
A spark of anger, a flash of excitement.

"And will you really create a kingdom?"
His voice came out low and burning.
“Or are you content to be yet another big name in the Wizengamot?”

Harry pushed himself away from the tree and walked towards him.
Every step was silence, authority, death.

"Oh, Tom..."
His voice was almost a caress.

“London will fall at my feet without me lifting a finger.
The nobles will believe it was their idea.
The families will follow me without knowing when it started."

It was magnificent.
It was crazy.
It was everything Tom had ever dreamed of being.

"You want to rule the wizarding world," Tom whispered. "But that's my ambition."

Harry tilted his head.

“It must be… difficult.”
He said it softly, almost sweetly.
“Seeing someone do your own war better than you.”

Tom almost trembled.

"I don't fear you."

“You should.”

Harry was very close now.
So close that Tom could feel his breathing, see a hint of shadow in his eyes that belonged to no man.

"You don't know what you're playing with."

“I know you’re not just a lord.”
Tom laughed softly, taking too much of a risk.
"I know ancient shadows follow you. That you carry something... greater than mortal magic."

Harry put his mouth close to his ear.
Not a kiss.
A condemnation.

“You have no idea.”

And then Tom understood why everyone was silent when Hadrian spoke.
Because the Malfoys bowed.
Why the Blacks turned pale.

It wasn't just political power.

It was something else.

Was Death.

“I dance with him,” Harry murmured. “And he dances with me.
If I feel affection, if I feel compassion, if I feel anger… he moves.
And if I want it… he takes it.”

Tom, for the first time in his life, didn't know what to say.
Yet he felt something monstrous growing inside him:

Wish.
Retreat.
Obedience.

Harry took a step away.

“Did you want to know who you're competing against?
Now you know."

Tom stared at him, and every fiber of his being screamed:

Own him.
Overcoming him.
Destroy him.
Or worship him.

But Harry turned away, already tired of him.

“Next time,” he said, coming out of the garden, “try surprising me.”

And Tom was left alone.
Frozen.
Hungry.
Obsessed.

Hadrian Peverell was no rival.

He was the abyss.

And Tom wanted in.

Chapter Text

— Tom—

The apartment was a cemetery of humidity, mold, and silence.
Tom slammed the door shut, his heart still pounding against his ribs, as if the Blacks' garden had followed him there.

He shouldn't have trembled.

Not for him.

He shrugged off his cloak and let it slide to the floor, like dead skin.
The room was ridiculous:
a creaky cot, peeling walls, a rickety table with stolen books and alchemical tools hidden under rags.

The perfect hiding place for a man who wasn't supposed to exist.
A man who was creating a new kind of magic.
A man who would become eternal.

He let himself fall onto the bed.
The springs creaked like breaking bones.

Tom closed his eyes.

But the darkness brought no peace.

It brought him.

The image of Hadrian – green eyes, cruel mouth, the slow, confident step of one who fears no consequences.
And the voice… that voice that seemed to whisper
I see you, I know you, I command you.

Tom bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted the metallic blood.

He had spent years weaving threads in the shadows.
One step at a time:
school, influence, circulation of dark artifacts, underground cults.
Immortality was a goal, but first there had to be power.

Nevertheless…

Hadrian was doing it without hiding.
Without shame.
Without fear.

Without fail.

In just one month, the Wizengamot had become his stage.
The lords kissed his hands.
Pureblood families vied for the privilege of serving him.

Tom's eyes widened, staring at the blackened ceiling.

He was losing ground.

No matter how eternal he might become…
What was the point of immortality if, upon his return, the world would be a plaything in Peverell's hands?

Hadrian's laughter – sweet, venomous – echoed in his head.

“It must be difficult, seeing someone doing your own war better than you.”

Tom sat up, his breath coming in short gasps of resentment.

Yes.
It was difficult.
It was unbearable.

He needed power now.
Visibility now.
His legacy was a weapon he had ignored for too long.

The blood of the Gaunts.
The lineage of Salazar Slytherin.
The House that was his by right, by birth, by destiny.

Everyone thought the Gaunts were gone.
Decayed.
Crazy.

Perfect.

A crown ignored is a crown easy to take.

Tom got out of bed, lit a candle with a hissing spell.
The flame illuminated a folded piece of parchment, the deed to the old Gaunt estate, purchased quietly, without witnesses.

He just had to claim the title.

And the world would finally have to look him in the face.

"Lord Riddle..." he muttered contemptuously. "That's not enough."

He looked at his hands.

Beautiful.
Lethal.

“Tomorrow,” he whispered, “it will be Lord Gaunt.”

Not the orphan boy.
Not the model student.

One of the Three Ancient Names.
Salazar Slytherin would have smiled from beyond the grave.

Tom lay down again, but the bed would not welcome him:
It was hard, uncomfortable and miserable.
Never had he been so aware of his condition.

Hadrian Peverell slept between thirst and ancient magic.

He lay among mold and shadow.

No.

This has to end.

Tomorrow he would reclaim what was his.
And when Hadrian looked again, he wouldn't see a boy fascinated by him.

He would have seen an heir.

A draw.

A rival.

Maybe even a king.

—

Gringotts had never shone so brightly.

It wasn't the torchlight that dazzled the stone corridors, but the fierce pride that coursed through his veins as the goblin, in a shrill, incredulous voice, proclaimed:

“Lord Tom Marvolo Gaunt, rightful heir to House Gaunt and the line of Salazar Slytherin.”

A title.
An ancient name.
A forgotten crown.

His time.

The sealed parchment burned between his fingers as he left the bank. Each step sounded like a bell tolling:
The world was changing, and not by Hadrian Peverell's will.

Today, it was his turn.

—

The room, hidden in a basement filled with dust and dark magic, shook slightly as Tom stepped forward.
Silence.
Eyes glued together.

Avery held his breath like a lover in front of his idol.
Nott seemed to be praying without realizing it.

Tom let them look at him.
That they worshiped him.

That they understood.

The announcement fell on the room with the weight of a sentence:

"The Gaunts are not extinct. I am their Lord."

Avery made a strangled sound, almost like crying.
Nott pounded his fist on his chest, like a knight swearing fealty.

"Our Lord..." Avery whispered, his eyes shining. "Finally the world will know. Finally you will be recognized."

Tom smiled, a sharp cut on his lips.

"I don't want to be recognized."
His eyes shone with a new hunger.
"I want to be obeyed."

Avery and Nott nodded, drunkenly.
They were knights ready for war.

Then Malfoy spoke.

Abraxas Malfoy—silver hair, proud heart—not kneeling, but bowing with calculated slowness.

“Congratulations, Lord Gaunt.”
Correct tone.
Poisoned tongue.

“I must admit,” he added, “that Lady Peverell treated me this morning with… less grace than one would expect from a well-bred young woman.”

Tom saw the flash beneath the politeness.
Malfoy was hurt.
Humiliated, perhaps.

And the idea amused him.

"Lady Peverell," he replied with sweet cruelty, "has more wit than you realize, Malfoy. I don't advise you to underestimate her."

Malfoy looked down for just a second.
Just enough to admit.

He had lost.

Orion.

Black was not like the others.
Nobility flowed over him like a second skin.
Elegance, charm, danger.

But, this time, Tom saw no admiration in Orion's eyes.

He saw fear.

A silent, lucid, noble fear.

“We have to be careful, Tom.”
The voice was low. Seriously concerned.
"Hadrian Peverell is rewriting the rules of the game. He has… influence. And the Ministry… listen to him."

Tom turned toward him, slowly, like a knife taking on the hue of the light.

“Peverell is leading a ball, Orion.
I… am preparing for a war."

Orion paled slightly.
Not for his words.
But for the greed in Tom's eyes.

Hunger.
The promise of blood.
The certainty of immortality.

A certainty that Hadrian had dared to question.

Tom approached.
One step.
Two.

Orion didn't move.

“There is no room for fear,” Tom whispered, “when history calls.”

Then, with a slow smile—beautiful, poisonous, irresistible—he concluded:

“Tomorrow the Wizengamot will know that two Lords rule this city.”

Avery took a breath.
Nott trembled.
Malfoy clenched his fists.

And Orion…
Orion realized that the world was about to explode.

—

The polished marble of the Wizengamot echoed beneath his footsteps.
Tom advanced like a destined conqueror.
Purple hoods turned, murmurs rippling through the air like uncast spells.
Magical London would remember this day.

A Lord read the decree, his voice sharp as a blade:

"Tom Marvolo Gaunt, direct heir to House Gaunt and the line of Salazar Slytherin, claims the vacant seat."

Silence.
Then, an explosion of consensus.

Avery and Nott stood up and applauded like fanatics.
Rosier, Mulciber, even Malfoy—with a satisfied smile—nodded.
A victory.

His.

Tom gave a slight, elegant, predatory bow and turned to face him.

Hadrian Peverell.

He sat on the highest of seats, as if he had been carved into the bark of power itself.
Shoulders relaxed, back straight, hands resting with imperial calm on the silver arms of his throne.

Tom searched his eyes for what he wanted to find:
envy.
tension.
fear.

But Hadrian Peverell…was smiling.

Not a kind smile.
Not a worldly smile.

No.
That smile was like a blade caressed by the fingers.
A silent victory.

And there, in front of the entire Wizengamot, Tom understood.

He had played the move Hadrian was waiting for.

A shiver ran down Tom's spine—cold, electric, sublime.
It seemed as if the whole world was holding its breath.

Hadrian inclined his head slightly, like a sovereign recognizing a knight…
or a future prisoner.

“Lord Gaunt,” said Hadrian, in a voice that was honey and poison.
“Welcome, finally, to your home.”

No one heard the sound of Tom's heart breaking—not because he was heartbroken.
But because he surrendered.

He had fallen into the Peverell chessboard.
And he didn't want to leave.

Tom tried to keep his cool.
The regal, merciless distance that had always dominated the room.

But Hadrian was looking at him.
Not how you look at an opponent.

How to look at a piece already conquered.

In that moment, Tom saw something no one else could see:

An invisible crown, placed on Hadrian's long black hair,
forged of bones and black roses,
bathed in the blood of the centuries.

An Emperor.
A ruler born from the love of Death itself.

And Tom—Tom ​​Riddle, the destined one, the boy who whispered of dark magic like a forgotten deity—
For the first time in his life he felt the desire to kneel.

Not out of fear.
But for adoration.

But what a sweet cage it would be, what a sublime place it would be to remain at his feet and worship him.

The Wizengamot erupted in applause and murmurs.
And Hadrian did nothing to stop them.
He let the world celebrate Tom.

Because the world didn't know.

From today, Hadrian Peverell had no opponent.

He had a worshipper. 

The ancient wood of the chair creaked as Tom sat down.
It was his.
The Gaunt throne, the Slytherin line, living proof that he was not a nobody raised in an orphanage.
It was ancient blood.
Pure power.

He should have felt triumph.

Instead… he felt cold.

Because Hadrian Peverell hadn't looked away for a second.

Those green eyes were still watching him:
analyzing him, undressing him, reading.

Tom looked away, a tiny gesture, imperceptible to most.
But not to him.

He placed it on Hermione Peverell.
The young Lady sat with perfect posture, hands composed, an expression carved in marble of the aristocratic class.

Indifferent.
Cold.
As if Tom's presence had no weight.

He hated her for that.
For that contemptuous calm.

And yet—her indifference was an answer.
As if she knew that Tom, despite the elegance of his entrance, he wasn't the real threat.

She ignored him because the only one who mattered was her brother.

Him.

Hadrian.

Tom looked back at him, almost against his will.
And he found it already there.

Hadrian's gaze was not curious.
He wasn't hostile.

He was aware.

As if he had dug into his history, his ambitions, his most intimate secrets.

As if he had opened his mind and read what no one was supposed to know:

Hunger.
Power.
Death as a promise of eternity.
And now… that new obsession that was squeezing his lungs with every beat:

Hadrian.

Tom swallowed.
The air in the Wizengamot suddenly felt heavy.

How did he do it?

How could he have pushed him to claim the seat, today, just like that?
Tom mentally replayed every word, every look, every provocation—
and he realized that nothing had been a coincidence.

Hadrian had guided him.
Pushed.
Provoked.

He had laid traps like a chess player lays pieces, and Tom—Tom ​​Riddle, the perfectionist, the calculator, the predator—had walked right into them.

Voluntarily.

A shiver ran down his spine.

Hadrian knew something.

It wasn't just beauty, power, control.
It wasn't the smile that took his breath away.
It wasn't even that voice that seemed to caress the soul while cutting it in two.

No.
Hadrian had perception.

An awareness that went beyond common magic.

That smile, that absolute confidence…

Tom recognized it with both horror and fascination:

Hadrian wasn't looking at an opponent.
He was looking at a shadow that already belonged to him.

Tom felt his heart beat faster.
He wanted to find out what he knew.
He wanted to tear every secret out of him.
He wanted—for the first time in his life—to be looked at with something other than pity or fear.

He wanted… to be recognized.

Hadrian leaned forward slightly, the light licking at his green eyes.

And Tom understood:
That man was studying him.
Give it time.

It was not a chance meeting.
It wasn't meant to be.

It was a hunt.

And Tom Riddle, the boy who thought he was the wizarding world's finest hunter, had just discovered he was the hunted.

And the scariest part?

He liked it.

—Harry—

Harry had chosen the room carefully.
Not the reception hall, nor the library or the formal living room.
No—a smaller, more intimate room, lit by silver candelabras and a fire in the fireplace.
Dark walls, emerald green velvet, a low table with two black leather armchairs.

A space where conversation became confession,
and the confession was becoming a weapon.

Hermione was out, dragged into the new social labyrinth by Aysia Greengrass.
Harry was perfectly aware of it: without Hermione, Tom would let his guard down.

He lit the fireplace with a slow, deliberate gesture, like someone who knows the effect of his hands on the fire and on minds.

The elf appeared with a pop!

“My Lord, Lord Gaunt has arrived.”

Harry didn't turn around right away.
He let Tom come in and look at him from behind, the flames drawing his silhouette.
He let the silence weigh.

Predictably, Tom was the first to give in.

“Lord Peverell.”

Harry turned around, a polite—too polite—smile playing on his lips.

"Lord Gaunt. Welcome to my home."

Tom looked tense and hungry at the same time.
His gaze darted across the room, then up at him, then back across the room—as if searching for a trap.

Harry was amused by this.

Tom did not take a seat.
He stepped forward, his eyes dark, bright, shining with unspoken questions.

"I want to know."
His voice was low, controlled, but cracked by an emotion that would never be admitted in public.
"What do you know?"

Harry raised an eyebrow innocently.

"What should I know?"

Tom's breath faltered slightly.
Phenomenal self-control, for a boy who was collapsing from the inside.

"Don't pretend with me."
One more step.
"I've been to Hogwarts. I've seduced, persuaded, manipulated professors and Lords older and more powerful than you.
I was the best student in school.
I'm not…stupid."

Harry leaned gracefully on the arm of the chair, watching him.

Tom took a breath, finally pushing open the door he'd been trying to keep closed.

“You… look at me like you know who I am.
Like you had… dug into my head.”

His voice cracked on that last word.
That's where Harry saw the boy under the monster under construction:
alone, ambitious, desperately seeking someone who would see his greatness.

A perfect fracture to fit in.

Harry stood up, slowly, moving closer until there was a breath between them.

“Maybe,” he said softly, “I just know you better than anyone ever tried.”

Tom's heart beat so fast that Harry could feel it in the air.
Not with magic—with experience.

Harry returned to the chair, sitting calmly.
He let Tom stand, like a subject who didn't know where to place his devotion.

Tom caught his breath, his hands clutching the sides of his cloak.

“You are a Legilimens.”
It wasn't a question.

Harry smiled—that sharp, elegant, deliberately cruel smile.

“You could call it that.”

Tom's eyes widened, not in fear.
For a fierce, almost feverish desire.

Having someone on your mind… and not feeling violated.
To be read, understood, discovered.
It was a kind of intimacy Tom had never known.

Harry knew it.
Harry had calculated it.

Tom stood still for a long second.
Harry saw every possible reaction in his eyes—fury, threat, calculation, even an offer of alliance.

But Tom did none of that.

Instead… he moved with an unreal calm.
He took a step forward, then another, until he reached the armchair where Harry sat with regal grace.

And he knelt down.

Tom's knees touched the black and gold carpet, his hands resting on his sides, his cloak sliding to the floor like broken wings.

It wasn't submission.
It was devotion.

The fire in the fireplace painted crimson reflections in Tom's eyes, and in that light Harry saw something disturbing, almost sacred:
the desire of a god to be recognized by his prophet…
or of a monster who finally found his saint.

Tom looked at him, like Icarus looked at the sun—
not with fear, but with adoration.

"If you came here to kill me..."
Tom's voice was calm.
Almost serene.
“I would accept that.”

A break.
He barely breathed.

“Death…”
His eyes rose to meet Harry's.
“…if it comes from your lips… it would be an honor.”

The world seemed to stop.
Harry didn't look away, but he felt a thrill inside him.
Not out of pity, not out of disgust.

Of real surprise.

Tom continued, with that calm etched in marble:

“I’ve never met anyone who saw me.”

His breathing slowed.
His lips curved into a fragile, almost human smile.

“If you entered my mind…if you know me…Then this time…there is nothing to fear."

Tom tilted his head, his voice barely a whisper:

"Kill me, Hadrian Peverell…or keep me at your feet. I will accept both."

The silence after those words was not empty.
It was full, saturated, heavy as a promise.

Harry stood still, his fingers resting on the arm of the chair.
The smile slipped away, leaving his face bare, cold and inscrutable.

He didn't expect this.
Not even from him.

He, who would one day become Voldemort.

And yet—there it is.
On his knees.
Not defeated.
Not broken.

But… voluntary.

Harry was stunned.

For the first time, he heard the most dangerous truth of all:

Tom Riddle didn't just want to rule the world.

He wanted someone worthy of dominating him.

And Hadrian Peverell had become that someone.

Harry didn't speak right away.
He let the silence wrap around that twisted confession like black silk.

Then, slowly, he leaned forward.

His hand slid under Tom's chin, lifting his face with a gentleness that hurt more than violence.
The other grabbed his neck—the fingers cold, the grip light but undeniable.

Tom trembled.
Not of fear.

Of desire.

Harry tilted his head, his dark hair casting a shadow over his eyes.

"I never thought..."
The voice was a sharp whisper.
“…that you, Tom Riddle, would bend the knee to someone.”

The grip on his neck tightened slightly — a warning.
A promise.

Tom gasped out a ragged breath, but didn't move.

Harry smiled in a way that belonged not to a man, but to something more ancient.

"You understood only one thing..."
His thumb touched his throat, slow, possessive.
“Power recognizes power.”

Tom's eyes widened, not in fear — in ecstasy.

Harry leaned down until his lips touched her ear.

And he spoke in Parselthounge.

The sound rippled through the air: hissing, soft, venomous.
Tom shivered as if every syllable had caressed his skin from the inside.

“You fear me,” Harry said, still in that ancient tongue, “because I know your secret.”

Tom inhaled sharply.
He didn't dare ask how he knew.
He didn't dare lie to himself.

Harry returned to English, his voice low as a sharp blade:

“Tell me, Tom…”
The smile turned into something sharp, cruel, almost affectionate.
“Would you accept death… even without knowing who Hadrian Peverell really is?”

Tom raised his chin against the hand that held him, like a proud animal choosing its own chain.

His answer was a hoarse, feverish, knowing whisper:

"Yes."

Harry looked at him for a long time.
And for the first time, his cruelty was intertwined with something more dangerous than pity:

Interest.

Tom, the brilliant, the controlled, the born predator… was trembling. Voldemort was kneeling at his feet, his legs spread, the crotch of his trousers dangerously close to his boots, Harry noticed that Voldemort was excited, his stiff member was pressing on his trousers.

His throat moved under his fingers, his breathing ragged.
The eyes, normally sharp as steel, were dilated — dark, hungry.

Harry tilted his head slightly, as if he were studying an interesting phenomenon, not a man kneeling at his feet.

“You’re shaking, Tom.”

No reproaches.
Just a cruel realization. He slid his foot over Tom's hard member.

His fingers brushed the corner of Tom's lips—lightly, almost tenderly—then trailed back down to his throat.

"You want something from me."

Tom didn't speak.
He couldn't.

Harry leaned down until the space between them was a breath away.

“Do you want…” the smile touched his lips “…to be kissed?”

Tom's tremor became a jolt.
A broken breath.
A flash of shame and desire that almost broke him.

Harry chuckled softly, as if amused by a game only he knew.

“If you want it, Tom… ask for it.”
The grip on his neck tightened.
Warm. Possessive.
"But kindly."

Silence.

Then Tom took a sharp breath, and the voice that came out of him was not that of the future Dark Lord.
It was the voice of a boy who had just met his downfall.

"Please…"
His eyes were burning.
"Kiss me."

Harry stopped.

Not out of pity.

For pleasure.

Seeing him like this—broken and lucid at the same time—was an art.

The finger lifted his chin even higher, forcing Tom to look at him.

“That’s better,” he murmured.
“I knew you could be polite when you wanted to be.”

Harry's lips came—slow, full of promise and threat—to within a breath of his.

“Good boy.”

One breath, two.

Tom remained still, on his knees, his back straight out of willpower and not pride.
Harry feels every fragment of anticipation vibrating in the other's body, a wave of desire tied to fear, to obsession, to that sick attraction that Tom can't distinguish from power.

Perfect.

Harry bringed his face close to his, slowly, deliberately, until their lips barely touched—a phantom touch, nothing more.

Tom makes a low, almost inaudible sound.

Harry was emptying it.

Brief.
Thin as a blade.
A poisoned promise.

Their lips met for less than a second, but Tom trembled as if the contact had pierced his soul.

Harry pulled back slightly, watching the reaction: eyes closed, breathing ragged, lips parted as if they wanted to chase him.

It's almost… poetic.

"That's enough."

It wasn't a question.

Harry brushed his thumb across Tom's mouth, slowly, in a gesture that would seem tender if it weren't for the intent.

“Don’t think for a moment that this means you belong to me.”

The smile that follows is caressing and cruel at the same time.

“Because you are…” Harry lowered his voice, a velvet whisper that scratches the air, “… the one who wants to belong to me.”

Tom opened his eyes, and there was a fierce, almost religious devotion in them.

Harry sat back calmly, as if the kiss had been a trivial concession.
As if Tom wasn't still kneeling before him, ready to burn just to deserve another.

“Get up, Tom.”
The voice is soft. Orderly.
“The game has just begun.”

And Tom obeyed.

Chapter Text

–Hermione–

The porcelain cups clink softly, the murmur of conversation fills the air like a composed, poisonous buzz.
Hermione moved with calculated grace, the courteous smile she has learned to wear as effortlessly as a crown.

She understood.

Not by written laws, but by unspoken ones.
Hierarchy wasn't just political power: it was blood, history, and fear.

The Peverells were no mere ancient house.
No.
They were legend.
A dynasty considered almost royal, remained in the shadows for centuries and now returned, with Hadrian shining like a dark star above all other nobles.

Below them, just one step lower: the Gaunts.
And now that Tom had reclaimed his seat, society immediately fell into place, as if a puzzle had been put back into place.
The ladies, with their fans and their sharp smiles, did nothing but whisper:

“An alliance, soon.”
“Lord Peverell and Lord Gaunt… it is inevitable.”
“Nothing would be more powerful.”

Hermione didn’t react.
She just poured the tea and let them believe what they wanted.
Women fear what they don't understand—and Harry and Tom were both new, dangerous, fascinating things.

Then her mind took a different, more restless turn.

Where were the Potters?

Where was the family that, in her timeline, had given birth to James, to Harry, to so many kind and proud faces?

They had sifted through documents, genealogies, archives.
There were some names… But of Harry’s grandfather, no concrete trace.
No public appearances.
No political influence.

And that wasn't normal.

Hermione, pretending to sip her tea, flipped through the information in her mind.
History had changed by the time they appeared in this era.
The magic of time was not a passive river: it was a predator defending its own structure.

What if the timeline was preventing Harry from meeting his ancestors?
To prevent him from creating a paradox?
Or worse… to prevent him from finding out something?

Hermione put down her cup, smiling as gracefully as she sharpens a knife.

If time was trying to hide Grandpa Potter, then it meant he was important.
And if he was important, Hermione would find him.

No timeline, no pureblood society, and no destiny would stand in the way of the Peverells.

Not this time.

But her thoughts were interrupted.

A lady with ash-blond hair—Rosier's wife, elegant as a sharp knife—put down her teaspoon:

"Lady Peverell," she asked in a sugary voice, "the whole society is whispering. Tell the truth: does Lord Hadrian intend... a marriage alliance with Lord Gaunt?"

The living room suddenly becomes quieter.
The gazes narrow, greedy.
The name Gaunt is poison and promise at the same time.

Hermione slowly looks up at the woman.
She smiles.
A smile that has nothing innocent about it.

"A marriage?"
she feigns surprise, then drops the light-colored fan onto her knees.

“My brother wouldn't choose his husband like he chooses a family ornament.
He… values ​​power.
The mind.
The strength.
And above all… loyalty.”

The women held their breath.
Hermione tilted her head slightly, as if she were confiding an intimate secret:

“And Tom Riddle is very… fond of Hadrian.”

The sentence falls like a silent bomb.
Fans stiffen, lips tighten, some ladies blush.

Hermione was almost speechless.
She had lived through wars, dictatorships, and rebirths of the magical world… but nothing had prepared her for the elegance with which the wizards nobility of antiquity clothed their hypocrisy.

They did not accept a woman as a seat on the Wizengamot.
The “Ladies” were supposed to simply whisper the correct vows to their husbands, serving tea and smiles as if they were sharp weapons.
And yet… a possible pair of Lords, two men, two heirs, two powers united – that, yes, was acceptable.
Even admired.

Hermione held back a laugh.
Wizarding society at the time had a selective morality, shaped by convenience and blood.

She wondered if they were laughing at that contradiction, too.
Or if they simply ignored it, as they ignored everything that did not bow to power.

She remembered Aysia Greengrass's words, spoken moments before:
"Lord Peverell and Lord Gaunt… together they would be unstoppable."

Hermione sighed, leaning back in her chair, watching the women laugh and discuss alliances as if they were discussing needlework.

She bet that some of them, if the occasion demanded it, would throw their daughters into that flame.
Not for love, but for convenience.
A surrogate pregnancy, a child born from two powerful lineages… it wasn't scandalous, not anymore.

The magical society had found a perfect solution to every moral obstacle:
a spell.

Ritual impregnations, blood pacts, inheritance scrolls that sealed the union more firmly than any traditional marriage.
If two families wanted to ally, and they only had two sons… the magic itself would ensure the continuity of the name.

Hermione shivered.
Not out of disgust — but because of the precision with which everything had been constructed.
An ancient, refined, immutable system.
Every problem solved, every voice silenced.

“Lady Peverell, are you all right?” a worried voice asked, bringing her back to reality.
Hermione smiled slightly.

"Great. I just... I was thinking that magic can be more modern than the wizards themselves."

The ladies laughed, not really understanding the venom in those words.
Hermione let them laugh.
Inside herself, she only thought about Harry and Tom, and how blind that society would remain to them, until it was too late.

Hermione continued softly, however:

“ Don't get me wrong.
A crown is not given… it is earned.
And if Lord Gaunt wants my brother, he will have to prove himself worthy."

One of the older women, Lady Avery, clears her throat:

“And… What if you were the one getting married, Lady Peverell?
Could we soon have a new Lord at your side?
Young Malfoy is said to be… interested.”

Hermione laughed.
A low, elegant laugh, sharp as glass.

“Oh, Lady Avery…
If Lord Malfoy desires my hand, he might start by living up to the name Peverell.
And so far, the only thing he's shown…"

Her voice becomes mellifluous, poisonous:

“…that's how much he gets offended easily.”

The living room erupted in murmurs.
A wonderful scandal.

Hermione sipped her tea as if nothing had happened.

Dominate. Not by force, but by word.
This was the true battlefield of the purebloods.

And while the women were resuming speaking in a low tone, Hermione felt almost… dangerously alive.

Then, calmly, she asked:

“Tell me, Lady Rosier… do you know anything about the Potters?
I'm organizing an event and it would be rude to neglect an ancient family like theirs."

The silence that follows is too long.
Too heavy.

Lady Rosier looks down at her cup.

“The Potter family has… left the capital.
They prefer the countryside.
They live far away from everything.
It is… rare to see them participate in political life.”

A lie.
A well-disguised lie — but a lie nonetheless.

Hermione felt shivers run down her skin.

Someone was hiding the Potters.
And not by chance.

The smile that appeared on her lips was slow, glacial.

If history wanted to hide the Potter branch…
Hermione Peverell would have torn the veil piece by piece.

—Harry—

Peverell Castle was silent when he returned.
A dense, ancient silence… as if the stones themselves held back breath.

Harry walked slowly through the corridors, thinking.
The night with Tom had taken a turn he hadn't expected—or maybe he had.
Part of him knew it would end like this: Tom on his knees, eager, ready to offer his throat and heart with the same hunger with which he sought power.

But what had struck Harry was not the submission.

It was the look.

Tom Riddle had never looked at anyone like that.
With devotion.
Confession.
Desire… and fear.

Harry removed his black leather gloves with surgical calm, as if he were still touching his skin, his lips.

The fire in the fireplace crackled, casting long shadows on the marble floor.
The castle was alive.
And he was no longer the guest of the past, but the master.

Tomorrow would be different.

Tom had claimed the title of Gaunt.
That gesture had split magical society like a blade.
The Wizengamot was already trembling, wondering if Peverell and Gaunt would unite… allies… merge.

Harry smiled, slow, cold.

No.
He wouldn't allow Tom the luxury of believing himself to be his equal.

He would have bent that society from within, with the same grace with which one pours wine into a glass:

silent, elegant, inevitable.

Hermione was the most dangerous weapon in the hands of women.
And he in the hands of men.

Tom, the Malfoys, the Blacks: everyone was playing.
Everyone was betting.

But only Harry knew the end of the game.

He stopped in front of the large baroque mirror in the corridor, looking at his own image: black hair tied with a silver ribbon, green eyes that reflected fire and—behind the fire—death.

He was no longer the boy who begged the Ministry to change.

He was the Master of Death.
And death needed order.

His hand touched the edge of the cloak, as one might caress the edge of a sword.

“Let the next act begin,” he murmured.

The castle seemed to quiver, to approve.

Tomorrow he would move his next piece.
Tom wasn't the only ancient lord whose heart he handled.

The Wizengamot would have applauded, ignoring the noose slowly descending around their necks.

And when they finally understood—

—it would have been too late.

—

The circular room was crowded.
The ancient dark marble benches gleamed in the light of the floating spheres.
Every Lord and Lady present had the same expression: expectation.

After the Gaunts' appearance, everyone was waiting for the Peverells' countermove.

Harry entered silently.

Unannounced.

Unaccompanied.

The black cloak swept across the floor like a wing, and every member of the Wizengamot straightened.
His presence alone seemed to change the color of the air.

He sat down on the Peverell throne—not a chair, not a seat, a throne—and crossed his legs, elegant, predatory, patient.

It was Tom Gaunt who spoke first.

"Lord Peverell," he said, his voice breathy but firm. "The Wizengamot awaits your input on the agenda."

Tom looked at Harry, not as a rival… but as someone who wanted to be chosen.

Harry inclined his head, slow, measured.

"Certainly."
His voice was velvet and blade.

Everyone was silent.

Harry stood up, placing a hand on the edge of the circular table.

"Ancient magic does not belong to chaos," he began. "Our society has grown weak. Divided. Naive."

Some nodded. Some shivered.

“We have forgotten what it means to be Wizards.
We have let Muggles, Ministry and Fear choose our laws."

Abraxas Malfoy straightened, enthusiastic.
Avery and Nott almost trembled with approval.

Harry continued.

“My proposal is simple:
Reform the Wizengamot to restore to the Elder Families the power that our history commands.”

A murmur ran through the room—excitement, terror, longing.

“I would like to propose,” Harry  continued, with a very thin smile, "let the four Founding Families of the ancient blood sit as the Supreme Council."

Everyone's eyes snapped to him.

“Peverell.”
He touched her chest gracefully.

“Gaunt.”
His eyes fell on Tom, and Tom held his breath, as if those syllables were a kiss.

“Black.”

A murmur of agreement.

"And Malfoy."

Abraxas seemed almost to faint with satisfaction.

The room erupted in whispered discussions.
Those who were excluded were furious.
Whoever was included wanted to kneel.

Tom looked at him like a man looks a deity who accepts his prayer.

Harry raised a hand.
Silence fell immediately.

“It’s not a threat,” he said softly. “It’s a gift.
The magical elite will reign.
And the world will follow us."

He was political.
It was poisonous.
He was irresistible.

And everyone, everyone knew it was just the beginning.

Harry let the chatter die down.
Then, in a clear and merciless voice:

“But there is a mistake that the Ancient Families have continued to repeat for centuries.”

The room tensed.
Even Malfoy stopped smiling.

"You married your cousins, your uncles, your own surnames. You confused purity with stagnation. You weakened your own magic."

An elegant stab, straight to the heart of the aristocracy.

“Pureblood is no longer synonymous with power.”
Harry's green eyes shone.”Magic is.”

People held their breath.

Harry opened a parchment sealed with black and silver sealing wax.

“My sister, Lady Hermione Peverell, an expert researcher and historian of ancient magic, has compiled studies on the subject.”

Hermione wasn't there — but her shadow seemed to fill the room.

"Research shows that so-called Muggle-borns are descendants of Squibs. Wizards who temporarily lost access to magic due to curses, wars, or misfiring of magical heritage."

Someone gasped.

"The magical power of Muggle-borns is purer. Undiluted by inbreeding.
Half-bloods surpass the average pureblood in strength.
And many families of 'ancient purity' are slowly dying out.”

The silence fell thick and heavy.

Abraxas Malfoy jumped up, indignant.

“Lord Peverell, this is—”

Harry raised a single eyebrow, icy.

“Lord Malfoy,” he said with a calmness more deadly than fire, “I would remind you that you yourselves descend from the Veela. A creature that, by your own definition, is not human. Therefore, your blood is already… hybrid.”

Abraxas froze.
Pale as marble.

A couple of the Wizengamot members laughed softly.
Tom Gaunt smiled—that sharp, hungry smile.
The smile of a man witnessing a King born .

Harry continued, adamant:

"I don't propose the end of nobility. I propose its rebirth.
Families that embrace power, not weariness.
Families that seek the strongest magic, not the oldest surname."

Every word was a fishing hook.
And everyone was biting.

“If you choose to remain… deadwood,” Harry said with measured ferocity, “history will break you.
But if you choose rebirth… you can unite the wizarding world under one worthy legacy.”

Nobody breathed.

Then, slowly…
Tom clapped his hands.

A solitary, elegant, hypnotic applause.

Avery followed him.
Nott.
Some Greengrass.
Some Black.

Magical London was changing before their eyes.

And Hadrian Peverell was rewriting the rules.

The Chairman of the Wizengamot, still stunned, tried to regain control:

“The Council will consider Lord Peverell’s proposal… within the next legislative cycle.”

A pathetic attempt.
And Harry destroyed him with a single sentence:

“No. The proposal goes to the vote now."

Everyone turned to him.

“According to the Code of 1284, Article 7, paragraph 2,” Harry said as if reciting the days of the week, “if a proposal concerns the survival of a dynastic line, the vote must be immediate.”

Silence.
And then the slow, cold gaze…
focused on Tom Gaunt.

“Lord Gaunt,” said Harry, “do you wish to contest the Article?”

In that regard, Tom understood everything.
He had just been made an accomplice.
If he refused, he would be siding with decline and weakness.
If he accepted, he became Hadrian's blade.

Tom stood up, his voice smooth:

“No objection. Let's vote."

The die was cast.

The stones of the Wizengamot Ring lit up one by one.

Green = favorable
Red = opposite

The ancient branches of nearly extinct families—Carrow, Selwyn, Yaxley—voted red.
They were too fragile to change.

But then…

• Black: Green.
  
  
• Greengrass: Green.
  
  
• Rosier: Green.
  
  
• Lestrange: Green.
  
  
• Malfoy…he hesitated.
  Abraxas knew that this law would give power to Hermione, and thus to the Peverells.
  But he also knew that opposing it would mean the end of society.
  
  

With clenched jaw: Green.

Then, finally:

Gaunt: Green.

Tom didn't look at anyone except Hadrian.
Political submission, desire, and defiance—all in the same glance.

The room glowed with green lights.

The president, trembling:

“The proposal passes with… an absolute majority.”

Hadrian didn't smile.
Smiling would have been human.
He stood up, his cloak skimming the floor like black wings.

“I thank this Council,” he said with the calm of a sovereign who thanks no one.
“The Kingdom of Magic will prosper. The decadence is over."

As he left the room, everyone bowed slightly—not out of obligation, but out of reflex.

And Tom watched him go, knowing he had voted for his own downfall.

And for his salvation.

—

The library doors flew open before Harry could even remove his hand.
Hermione entered like a storm of velvet and intellect, her eyes shining, her cheeks flushed with euphoria.

“You did it!”

Harry barely had time to turn around: Hermione threw herself at his neck, clutching him with surprising strength for a young lady of high society.

"You've destroyed centuries of prejudice with a single session of the Wizengamot!" she said breathlessly. "The lesser families are already sending messengers. You've opened a door they thought was forever barred."

Harry laughed softly, stroking her back like someone who had fought the same war.

"Calm down, Mione. We won a battle, not the war."

Hermione pulled away, but her smile didn't go away.

“You managed to get Tom Riddle to vote for it.”
She sank into a chair, still incredulous. "The most obsessed with pureblood has become the witness to its overcoming. It's… poetic."

Harry looked away, serious, almost grim.

“And yet it's not enough.”

Hermione's smile faded, replaced by that analytical flash Harry knew well.

"What's the next step?"

Harry clasped his hands behind his back, staring out the window.

"There's still a stigma against Muggle-borns. As long as it remains, this law can be used against them. I want them to be able to attend Hogwarts without their parents' names alone being a social scar."

Hermione held her breath.

Harry added, calm as a king and sad as a man:

"And it's not enough to protect wizards. There are creatures who have fought in the shadows for this world and have never had rights. Centaurs. Goblins. Elves. Werewolves. If we truly want to change this society, we must speak up for them too."

Hermione looked at him as if something impossible were taking shape.

Then she stood up, determined.

"Then we'll do it. Together. We'll look for legal precedents, exceptions, ancient contracts. If this council wants technicalities, we'll give them ones so complex they'll get trapped."

Harry stared at her for a long time, a flash of tenderness crossing the impenetrable face.

“You don’t have to do it for me.”

Hermione smiled, sweet and fierce at the same time.

"I'm not doing this for you, Hadrian. I'm doing this for us. For who we are. For who we will become."

And Harry slowly bowed his head.

A gesture he didn't make with anyone.

“I’m glad you’re with me,” he said softly.

Hermione hugged him again, tighter, more sincere.

In that ancient castle, where the Peverells ruled like crowned shadows, two orphaned brothers from the future were rewriting the destiny of the past.

And the war hadn't even started.

—

Orion Black was a man who could smile with grace and think with ferocity.

That afternoon he invited him back to Grimmauld Place.
No crowds, no Tom, no noisy living rooms.
Just two cups of tea, a lit fireplace, and a clear intention behind the courtesy.

Harry understood immediately: Orion wanted to talk about power.

“Lord Peverell,” he began in a velvety voice, “you have… conquered magical London very quickly.”

Harry sipped his tea without betraying any emotion.
“I only said what our society needed to hear.”

Orion laughed.
“No, Hadrian… you said what you wanted that society should feel.”

The grey eyes, so similar to the ones Harry remembered belonging to him on nights at Grimmauld Place,  sparkled of intelligence.

“You are not a man who acts by chance. And the way you treat Tom Riddle is… fascinating.”

Harry barely looked up.
Not surprised.
Just be careful.

"Tom?" he asked calmly. "I didn't know this was a topic Black’s were interested in."

Orion folded his hands on the table, elegant as a king on his throne.

“ It interests me. And when a man with Tom Riddle's ambition falls in love with another man… and that second man is you… it interests me and all my family."

Harry remained still.
He neither denied nor confirmed.
He let the silence speak.

Orion was forced to fill it:

"Tom is brilliant. Dangerous. Power-hungry."
A sharp smile. "And you keep him on a leash without raising your voice. It's… remarkable."

Harry put his cup down.

"Orion, if Tom is a problem..."

“Tom is no problem, Lord Peverell.”
The gray eyes narrowed.
“The problem is how much he wants you.”

Harry didn't answer.

“And how much you might want to use it.”
The sentence fell like a sharp blade.

Harry looked at him with cold sincerity.

“In politics, Orion, everyone is used.
Tom will be no exception."

Orion inhaled slowly.
For a moment he looked scared… then fascinated.

“ You’re playing a bigger game than the Wizengamot, Hadrian.
And I want to know… which side my family will fall on.”

Harry watched him.
The grey eyes are attentive, calm… but dangerous.

"It depends," he said finally. "If the Blacks can recognize who's already won."

Orion's throat moved in a nervous swallow.
Not of fear.
Of awareness.

“And Tom?” he asked softly, as if he were afraid of the answer.

Harry stood up, walking over to the window.
His voice was velvet and threat.

“Tom lives for power. And he will die for it. If he wants to stay by my side, he will have to accept it."

Orion stiffened.
"What if he doesn't?"

Harry turned around.
The smile was slow, cruel, beautiful.

“Death does not negotiate, Orion.”

Silence.
Then, as if the decision were suddenly easy:

"Then the Blacks will be on the Peverells' side."

Harry approached and held out his hand.
Orion took it.

A firm grip.
An undeclared… but sealed alliance.

And in that look Harry saw something that almost made his chest hurt:

Orion no longer admired him.

He feared him.

—

Harry sat just behind a column in the drawing room of Peverell Manor, watching the conversation between Hermione and Abraxas Malfoy.

Hermione's handling of the discussion was familiar, almost nostalgic.
Harry immediately remembered the long conversations at Grimmauld Place, when Hermione would argue with Ron over the most trivial matters, just to convince him that she was right.
The same fire, the same precision, the same elegant ferocity.

Abraxas was trying to talk about political alliances, about possible agreements between families.
Hermione listened to him for a moment, leaning slightly, then, with a faint smile, replied with the sharp wisdom that Harry knew well:

“Mr. Malfoy,” she said calmly, “if you want to impress anyone with empty words, I’m afraid this is not the place.”

The blow was light, like a stone in a pond.
Yet Abraxas blushed slightly, his jaw tense, his quick gaze trying to mask his embarrassment.

Harry held back a smile, noticing every little movement.
It wasn't just embarrassment.
It was… interest.

The same spark he had seen in the young lovers at Hogwarts, in the corridors, in the common rooms.
And he, sitting behind the column, understood something fundamental: Malfoy was really infatuated with Hermione.

And for the first time, Harry truly saw her from another point of view.
Not just his sister, not just his ally, not just his companion in war and power.
But like a woman who made a Malfoy tremble, and he himself knew how rare that was.

And in his heart, a strange combination of pride and protectiveness mingled with a cold thought: whoever dared challenge her,now or in the future, he would find no mercy.

Harry had moved behind a large velvet drape, observing every detail with a barely contained smile.
Abraxas Malfoy was speaking in a tone too confident, too self-confident to bear with Hermione's sharp mind.

“I don’t understand,” Abraxas said, making a dramatic gesture, “how a young woman could consider herself worthy of handling such important family matters…”

Harry barely held back a laugh. The tone was a little too subtle, a little too provocative.
Hermione looked at him, and for a moment time seemed to stand still.

"Worthy?" Hermione replied, her voice sharp as a blade. "Mr. Malfoy, I am here not to be worthy of you, but to remind you that it is my mind, not your judgment, that determines the course of this conversation."

Abraxas's eyes widened, his face suddenly pale. Harry saw everything: Malfoy's heart was racing, his jaw muscles tense, embarrassment mingling with shock.

Hermione stepped forward, tilting her chin slightly, and said in a slow, venomous voice:
"And if you think you can intimidate anyone in this room with your name, I advise you to think again. I'm not a doll to be wooed with empty smiles, and my respect cannot be bought with arrogance."

Harry held his breath to keep from laughing too hard, watching as the red slowly spread across Abraxas's face.
It was the exact same expression Draco had had years ago, in their timeline, when Hermione had mercilessly set him straight.

Abraxas tried to answer, his voice shaking:
"I… I didn't mean—"

"You didn't mean what?" Hermione interrupted, her eyes blazing. "You didn't mean to insult me? You didn't mean to be so incredibly pathetic in front of a woman who can put you right with just a look?"

And in that instant, Harry saw something unexpected: a flash in Abraxas's eyes, a change.
It was pure, overwhelming love, immediately triggered by that combination of intellect, coldness and ironic cruelty.

“I… I don’t know what to say,” he stammered, unable to move anything but his hands.

Hermione, undaunted, slapped him precisely. A sharp, clean sound.

Harry barely held back a burst of laughter. Abraxas's expression, somewhere between shock and adoration, was a perfect spectacle.
And Malfoy's gaze fixed on her with a devotion that Harry could clearly read: a mix of awe, desire, and absolute admiration.

Hermione crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow.
"There, Mr. Malfoy, a lesson in respect. Learn to take it seriously... or learn to suffer every time you allow yourself to underestimate someone like me."

Abraxas nodded slowly, unable to speak, and Harry smiled to himself.
He knew that this was the beginning of Malfoy's complete obsession with Hermione, and that no amount of political strategy could prevent the young Malfoy from being completely… won over.

—Tom—

The old Gaunt manor was not a castle.
It was a wreck.
Peeling walls, stones that oozed humidity and ancient blood, a silence that reeked of cobwebs and failures.

Yet Tom was there, in the rotten heart of his lineage, like a king who had returned to sit on the shattered throne of his dynasty.

He had spent hours sifting through yellowed parchments, family trees, archaic symbols, until he had found it.

Peverell.
Slytherin.
United by blood.

It was all there, strung between thin lines of ink and genealogical pride:
One of the Peverells had married Salazar Slytherin's daughter.

Tom brought a hand to his lips, trembling.

“That’s why…” he whispered, like someone discovering the origin of a prophecy.

That's why Hadrian was speaking Parseltongue.
That's why his power dominated him with such devastating ease.
He was not just an ancient noble.
He was heir to two sovereign dynasties.

A king.
A god.
And Tom, who wanted to become one… he found that wanted to kneel.

His hand flew to the black diary, hidden under a loose table.
He hugged the cold leather of the cover, like a forbidden lover.

No more.
Not now.

If Hadrian could read his mind…
If he had sensed the immortality Tom was building…

The idea made him shudder.
Not of fear.
Of excitement.

Hadrian had seen it.
Really seen.
Like no one had ever managed to do before.

And Tom didn't know if he wanted to love him or destroy him.

He knelt on the floor, removing the box in which he had hidden the Gaunt ring, the Horcrux that no one was supposed to find.
He took it in his hand: the black stone shone like a closed eye waiting to open.

“He won’t have you,” he hissed. "He won't read you. He won't touch you."

He adjusted the wards better, sealing magic upon magic, using more to hide the diary.
Two pieces of his soul far from the green eyes that had stripped him without touching him.

When he finished, exhausted, he collapsed against the wall.

His chest was shaking.
Not from the effort.

For the obsession.

Hadrian Peverell had humiliated Malfoy with a single sentence.
He had changed the law in just one day.
He had smiled at Tom… with cruelty and promise.

And he spoke Parseltongue.

Tom ran a hand through his perfect hair,messing them up without realizing it.

Hadrian Peverell was the perfect heir.
Ancient blood, sovereign power, mortal beauty…
A throne that no one had given him, and that he had taken.

Tom bit his lip until he felt iron and blood.

What had he seen in his mind?
How much had he discovered?

And above all…

What would Tom have done to get that man?
To possess him, or to destroy him?

The answer came to him with the swiftness of a prophecy:

Everything.

Chapter Text

—Harry—

The door closed behind him with a soft thud, and the world seemed to shut out.
In that room, among dark shelves, ancient wood and parchments that smelled of time, Harry could finally…breathe.

No politician.
No title.
No perfect smile.

Only him and the portrait of Ignotus Peverell.

Ignotus watched him silently from the enormous black wooden frame, his fingers intertwined, his gaze patient and nonjudgmental.
Harry sank into his chair, his shoulders suddenly feeling heavier than all the magic in the castle.

“I’m tired,” he said. His voice came out hoarse, almost frail—something no one, Nobody, except Ignotus, could ever hear.

The portrait inclined its head, as if encouraging him.

Harry ran a hand through his black hair and continued, almost letting the words trail off:

"Orion looks at me like I'm… something to be feared. It's not just respect, it's not just power. It's true terror. And I…" He took a deep breath. “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.”

The distant ticking of the castle clock was the only sound for a few seconds.

"I'm playing a risky game," he murmured. "Taunting Tom, seducing him, challenging him... It's like luring a dragon with a spark and hoping he doesn't burn the world to get it."

Ignotus stared at him with that unnatural calm that only the dead possess.

"Tom's smart. He won't stop looking. He'll suspect me. If he doesn't already. Every time I look at him, I know he's... closer."

His head fell back, his eyes closed.

"What if I'm wrong? What if I'm playing death with a man who isn't afraid of death? What if I'm creating an enemy worse than any we've ever had?"

A silence, deep and full, passed through the room.

Then Ignotus spoke, with a warm, serious, almost… paternal voice:

“Hadrian… you reflect death.”

Harry opened his eyes, taken aback.

The portrait continued:

"It's not your power that frightens them. It's what they see when they look at you. Hints of the truth. Of the end. Of the scales that no one can cheat. Men, even the bravest... tremble before death. You are their living reminder of what awaits them."

Harry stiffened. "I don't want to be… that."

Ignotus smiled—a sad, tender smile.

"Death is not a murderer, Hadrian. It is a judge. It is balance. It is peace for those who no longer have strength. Fear for those who have sinned too much."

Then his voice deepened:

“Tom doesn't fear you because you can kill him. Tom fears you because you can look inside him…and see him exactly for what it is."

Harry felt a shiver run down his spine.

“And that is something the man called Voldemort cannot tolerate.”

Ignotus bowed his head.

"You're not wrong, son. You're not losing control. He's losing it. Because for the first time in his life... Tom Riddle has encountered something he can neither understand nor control."

Harry remained silent, his throat tight, his chest full of emotions he couldn't name.

After a long moment he muttered:

"What if in the end… it destroys me?"

The portrait smiled,
not like an ancestor,
but as a family:

“Death is not defeated, Hadrian. It is accepted. Either you serve him or you kneel before him."

And Harry realised that, for the first time, even Tom Riddle was choosing to kneel.

“Do I reflect death?” Harry repeated, his brow furrowed.

Ignotus didn't answer immediately. He barely raised a hand, indicating the enormous, dark mirror embedded in the stone wall. It was ancient, veiled by a light layer of dust and magic. Not an ordinary mirror: an artifact.

"Look at yourself," the portrait said with gentle firmness. "Not with your eyes. With the truth."

Harry approached the mirror. Seeing only himself, a little tired, his hair disheveled, his expression tense, he almost snorted.

“I don't see—”

He stopped.

Behind his image, like a solidifying shadow, the man from the dream appeared.

What fate had whispered to him.
The one who had transported him to that time.

Death.

Not a skeleton.
Not a story.
A man in a dark, elegant, ancient cloak… as deep as an abyss.

Harry flinched, but couldn't look away.

In the reflection, Death raised a pale hand and placed a crown on Harry's head.

A crown made of thin bones intertwined like branches
and black roses that seemed to bloom from death itself.

Harry's breath hitched.

His image in the mirror changed.

He was no longer the boy he saw in the mirror every morning.

He was a ruler.

The invisibility cloak was no longer just a simple fabric.
It was a regal cloak—black as deep night, trimmed with ebony fur.
It fell on his shoulders like judgment.

The Elder Wand was no longer just a wand.
It emerged from the cloak like a scepter, bright, alive, powerful.

And on his finger, the Ring of the Resurrection Stone shone like a jewel.

Because in that reflection… he was the Law, the End, and Justice.

Death's hands fell on his shoulders—not cold, but inescapable.
Ancient.
Filled with a power that didn't need to scream.

Death leaned close to his ear in the reflection.

Harry heard the voice, not with his ears… but with his soul.

It wasn't a command.
Not a threat.
Only one truth:

"You are my Herald."

Harry's throat tightened.

Death continued:

"You don't bring destruction. You bring balance.
You are not the killer.
You are the judge."

Harry trembled.

Death added, like a whisper that touched his skin:

“Those who look into you, see their end.
And they bow their heads."

In the reflection, Harry saw himself smiling.
A smile that didn't belong to the boy he had been.
He was a ruler who knew his domain.

Death still stood behind his reflection. His hands on Harry's shoulders, the crown of bones and black roses glowing with an unnatural light.

Harry, still without turning, without looking away, whispered:

"Why me?"

His voice was not arrogant.
He wasn't even scared.
He was just… sincere.

"Why did you choose me?"

Death's reflection rose a little.
As if he were smiling, even though his face was impossible to decipher.

The answer was neither a scream nor thunder.

It was a whisper as ancient as the first breath of the world:

"Because you don't seek power."

Harry remained still.

Death continued:

“Whoever desires power… becomes its slave.
He who desires dominion… is consumed by ambition.
But you, Hadrian… power follows you.
You don't chase it."

The crown on his head shone brighter in the reflection.

“And for that… the power belongs to you.”

Harry felt a lump in his throat.
It wasn't pride.
It was a sacred, unavoidable burden.

Death continued, his voice closer, like a winter breath:

“I do not choose tyrants.
I don't choose conquerors.
I choose the one who brings balance.
He who does not fear chaos… but does not desire it.”

A break.

“You never wanted the throne.
And that's why you'll sit on it."

Harry slowly closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the figure of Death was fading, dissolving like a shadow in the light.

Before disappearing completely, he left one last whisper:

“Remember… Those who fear you do not hate you.
They recognise you."

And in the blink of an eye… the reflex returned to normal.

Only Harry.
No crown.
No Death.

And yet… the feeling on his shoulders was still there.

Ignotus in the portrait smiled, proud and melancholic.

“Now you know who you are, Hadrian.”

Harry took a deep breath.

Ignotus continued to speak in a calm, paternal voice.

 “Don't ask yourself if you're becoming like Tom. Tom kills for power. You don't need to kill.
The world simply… recognizes you.”

Harry stood there looking at his ordinary reflection, but his heart was beating like a war drum.

And he whispered, almost breathlessly:

“Master of Death.”

There was no fear.
Just inevitability.

—

Hogsmeade — “Three Broomsticks”

The air was biting, a cold that murder without snow. The inn was almost empty: only old wizards hunched over mugs of mead and the crackling of the wood in the fireplace.

Harry entered wrapped in his black cloak, his hood drawn low with the courtesy of a gentleman aware of his presence.

He saw him right away.

Albus Dumbledore sat by the fire, his blue eyes bright behind his half-moon spectacles, still young, his beard shorter, his copper-red hair flecked with just a little white.

Not the Principal.

Not yet.

A brilliant teacher and already feared for his sharp mind.

Dumbledore stood up with a gentle smile.

"Lord Peverell. Thank you for accepting the invitation."

Harry inclined his head politely.
“The Peverells do not refuse an invitation from Dumbledore.”

They sat down. Rosmerta brought two steaming butterbeers.
Dumbledore wasted no time.

"I've heard voices, Hadrian. Voices of change. Of reform. Of ideas... too modern to ignore."

Harry looked at him, with the same look Tom feared: quiet, lucid, ancient.

"The wizarding world must change. Or it will die."

A simple sentence.
Yet Dumbledore shivered.

“You speak like a man who has already seen the future.”

Harry smiled, slowly, enigmatically.
"No. I speak as a man who knows the past."

Silence.
Dumbledore studied him as one might study a riddle.

"You don't talk like your peers. And..."

There, Dumbledore's voice became lower, more careful.

“…you don't resonate like them."

Harry was silent.
He didn't deny it.
He did not confirm.

Dumbledore continued, with suspicious calm:

"There's no fear in you, Lord Peverell. Not in your aura. No tremor, no shadow. It's like..."

He searched for the word.

Harry offered it, serenely:

"Like death?"

Dumbledore breathed in slowly. Not scared. Just… aware.

"A presence like yours is never a coincidence."

And that's when Harry said the line that pierced him to the bone:

"You and Grindelwald were young when you changed the world. Not wise enough... but in love with the idea of ​​doing it again."

Dumbledore turned pale.

Not of terror.

Of pain.

Slowly, he whispered, “How do you know that name?”

Harry didn't look away.

"One day, Professor Dumbledore, history will tell us about you two. It will say you were bound by ambition. But the truth is simpler. You loved him."

Dumbledore closed his eyes.
As if those words scraped wounds that never healed.

"A dangerous love," he murmured. "And it's hard to understand how you know that."

Harry didn't talk about the Map of the Future, the history books, or the pain he'd read in the buried letters.

He just said:

"I'm not here to judge. I'm here to prevent anyone else from taking his place."

Dumbledore opened his eyes again… and finally he really saw them:

Those green eyes.

Non-human.
Not mortal.

Ancients.

And for the first time, Dumbledore understood:

Hadrian Peverell was no mere politician.

It was an omen.

An event.

A destination.

Yet, he was not afraid.
His voice was delicate, almost paternal:

“Whatever you are, Lord Peverell… my instincts tell me you are not our enemy.”

Harry gave a tiny smile.

“As long as the world chooses life, I will be on its side.”

Then, without changing his tone, he placed his hand on the mug:

"And you? Do you still love Gellert?"

Dumbledore looked at him for a long time.
Too long.

Then he whispered:

"Some loves never end. Let's just stop talking about them."

Harry nodded.
With terrible calm.
With respect.

“I understand you.”

Dumbledore understood then that that man brought pains that no one would ever understand.
Who was not born in their time.
Who spoke with the authority of one who had already seen the end.

And he had no more doubts:

Hadrian Peverell was destined to change history.

Not with magic.

With Death by his side.

—

Peverell Castle — private library

The fireplace was still lit when he returned. The echo of his footsteps faded through the gothic corridors, and Harry immediately sensed a familiar presence: Hermione was there, nervous... and content.

He found her sitting at the large ebony desk, surrounded by ancient books, notes written in a very neat hand, and—

Harry stopped.

The green gold medallion shone in the candlelight, like a newly opened snake's eye.

Slytherin's locket.

The Horcrux that once tamed the sea and the Inferi.

Hermione looked up, the smile of a hunter who knows she's brought home an impossible prey.

“Welcome back, Harry.”

He brought his hand closer to the object, without touching it.

“How?”

Hermione leaned back in her chair, looking as if she were about to tell a delightful story.

"Elder Hepzibah Smith. A vain woman... and lonely. All I had to do was introduce myself as Lady Peverell, say I was interested in her private collection, and that the Ministry was considering a law to tax inherited objects from non-aristocratic families."

Harry just frowned.

"You lied."

“ I negotiated.”
Her eyes were shining dark and calculating.
This was the version that the world would learn to fear.

“I led her to believe that, in exchange, I would support her request to register the Smith family as ‘minor nobles.’”

Harry slowly lifted the locket with an enchanted glove.
The snake carved on the S slithered into the light.

"And her? Did she just give it to you, without any hesitation?"

Hermione gave herself a sharp smile.

"I confused her. I told her about my friendship with the Greengrass family, my corporate relationship with the Peverell bank, I cited two or three ancient laws of magical property, and..."

He leaned forward, honey-colored eyes burning with pride:

“I bombed her with information until she didn't understand anything anymore.
She signed a contract and handed me over everything she had that was most precious to her."

Harry looked at her with a mixture of amazement and amused admiration.

"You fooled Hepzibah Smith."

"Yes."
Hermione stood up, crossing her arms.
“And now we have what would become a Horcrux.”

Harry felt a pang in his chest.
The past and the future had merged: the War, the Darkness, Riddle… they had returned.

But this time, they had the upper hand.

"Dumbledore knows nothing."

Hermione nodded.
"And he doesn't have to. Not yet."

Harry placed the locket on the protective cloth.

"Tom will come looking for it. I don't think he's given up on creating more Horcruxes."

Hermione approached, her voice low, firm.

"And we'll wait for him. With the knife already held to our throats."

Harry smiled. Dark. Proud. Dangerous.

“Hermione… do you know you’re turning into someone Grindelwald would have hired as a strategist?”

She answered him with a smile that was both tough and sweet at the same time.