The castle welcomed me back like an old friend — its stone and spellwork unchanged, but my mind utterly different. The halls smelled of melted snow and burnt toast; students traded holiday stories with the reckless confidence of the young. I listened with a polite smile and filed each anecdote away. None of it mattered. The work, the practice, the refinement — that was the only thing that meant anything.
My first class that morning was, as always, Transfiguration with Professor Dumbledore.
I walked into the classroom with the sort of calm certainty I had learned to wear like a coat. Abraxas and Orion had already taken seats near me; they gave that small, satisfied look people reserve for allies who share a secret. Across the desks, other faces were eager, sleepy, or hopeful. Dumbledore stood at the front, his posture relaxed but his eyes—always those eyes—sharp and curious. Even now, in a younger man's frame, he carried the unshakeable air of a strategist. He was, I decided afresh, the benchmark I would someday eclipse.
He greeted the class with the soft, familiar lilt that could have been mistaken for kindness if you didn't know how deadly precise his mind could be. "Good morning. Today we will explore partial transfiguration—retaining sentience in an altered form and learning to redirect an animate object's will without corrupting its essence."
A murmur of interest rippled through the students. To most, this was difficult and elegant theory. To me, it was a weapon.
I set my jaw and opened Dumbledore's notebook again under my desk—not because I needed it, but because habit was discipline. The notes I'd stolen—gifted—into my blood and mind over the break hummed with potential. The Codex of Serpentine Arts, Merlin's scrolls, the Black family volumes: they all bent together into one thing in my head. Transfiguration was more than shape change. It was the skeleton key to control.
Dumbledore demonstrated first. A small parchment bird folded to life in his hand, its wings beating with arresting realism. He softened its will, redirected its movement, then eased it back to stillness. The class applauded politely. He looked up at me as the sound died. That look—curiosity wrapped in the faintest of challenges—traveled straight to the part of me that kept score.
When he called for volunteers, I rose before anyone else could. Standing felt natural; standing felt right. I stepped into the center and raised my wand.
"Transform this desk into a living wolf," Dumbledore said, voice even. "Not an animal puppet—imbue it with controlled, obedient intellect. Demonstrate that you can temper change with restraint."
The exercise was an invitation and a test.
I moved. The wand felt like an extension of intention, as it always did now—more intimate, more exact. I saw the desk's grain as muscles, the knots as joints. I felt the lines of intention that Dumbledore wanted tempered, and I folded mine over them like a glove. My wand motion was clean, silent. The desk's legs lengthened, panels flexing into taut flanks; wood became fur in a blur of light and scent. When the creature opened its maw, the sound was not animal but curated—controlled and listening.
"Protego," I whispered, running the structure of a shield charm through the wolf's mind so its instincts could not turn on the room. I guided the spark of sentience like a hand shaping clay. The wolf's eyes met mine: intelligent, obedient, tethered.
Dumbledore's smile was small and private as he surveyed the work. "Very good, Tom. Full transfiguration with retained sentience—and stable control. A rare achievement at your level."
The class exhaled as though someone had released them from expectation. Abraxas leaned close, whispering, "You did it… again."
I nodded once. Praise was a currency I accepted sparingly.
After class, while others packed and chattered, Dumbledore approached me. Not for praise, not exactly. He folded his hands and looked at me with the kind of regard you offer a dangerous, promising book.
"You're accelerating," he said softly. "You read quickly—too quickly, perhaps. I am pleased to see such facility, Tom. But remember this: power without perspective bends toward ruin."
His gaze tightened. "You must cultivate tempering principles—ethics, restraint, responsibility. Mastery without those is reckless."
My mind catalogued his words the way I catalogued spells. "I appreciate the warning," I said, polite and level. "I expect I will need fewer lessons on restraint than you think. But I will heed your counsel in so far as it is useful."
He studied me with a look that suggested he saw the thinnest seam in my mask. "Very well. Continue to challenge yourself. There is much you are capable of, Mr. Riddle. Much you may become."
He turned away then, as though the conversation were concluded. But I stayed, letting the echo of his voice settle like a map beneath my skin.
Dumbledore would be my greatest rival only if I let him be. He would notice things; he would suspect. He would come close to truth. That meant I needed more than raw ability. I needed strategy.
After the lesson I retreated to the Room of Requirement. There, among my books and runes, I layered combat transfigurations with the piercing spells I'd learned at Black Manor. If a barrier could stop a wand, the piercing form would collapse it. If an opponent could hide behind wards, the transfigured constructs I created could bypass them. I practiced shaping animate constructs to carry curses, to channel sacrificial sigils, to act as containers for blood-etched runes. Everything intersected: transfiguration, runes, blood sigils, and now—my expanding necromantic knowledge, waiting like a backstop.
A system chime pulsed in my mind—an unobtrusive reminder of progress. Skill refinement: Transfiguration (Advanced) — Efficiency +12%. The system applauded; I felt nothing but the cold satisfaction of utility.
I rehearsed the scenarios over and over: duels where my constructs would fracture defenses, infiltration where transfigured keys became living instruments, governance where a single, perfectly directed transfiguration could decide a battle without mass slaughter. Dumbledore had suppressed darkness before. He used intellect and moral calculus to counter raw force. So I planned to match him with method, surprise, and inevitability.
When night fell and the castle settled into quiet, I walked the dungeons to my common room. Students laughed, lovers whispered, prefects strode in purposeful lines. My shadow stretched in the torchlight—long, composed, patient.
The path I walked would require things the world called monstrous. I had already accepted that. But I also would build an engine—discipline, cunning, talent—constructed in the careful geometry of my mind. Transfiguration would be the hammer; strategy would be the forge. Dumbledore might be the century's finest teacher, a defender of his ideals, but he would be, ultimately, a problem to be solved.
I lay in bed that night not with fantasies of conquest, but with plans of practice, a schedule layered like armor: train, recruit, experiment, bind, repeat. Skills demanded constancy. Power required iteration. And the more I refined what I could do—especially the art of changing forms and reweaving wills—the closer I came to being impossible to stop.
Tomorrow, I thought, I would teach my circle another refinement: partial transfiguration for infiltration—how to move through a warded gate as a shadow without triggering any detection.
Dumbledore's warning echoed, but I had already translated it into steps, a schematic to be used or ignored as necessary.
I closed my eyes and let the dark settle. The forge was warm; the metal sang faintly. I would beat it into shape.