Truthfully, he was a man with very little sense of security. Out in the real world, he kept himself from dreaming even in his sleep, some deep instinct always on guard. But inside the study space, he felt completely safe, and his guard had slipped without his noticing, which was exactly how Ravenclaw had caught him.
With a wager this brutal hanging over his head, Tom wasn't about to take any chances. He stayed up the entire night compiling teaching materials for Joan.
The next day, even in the middle of his regular classes, most of his attention stayed fixed on the study space, coaxing Joan along step by patient step.
If Joan's seriousness, on a scale of one to a hundred, sat at a hundred when facing Ravenclaw or Ariana, then facing Tom it rocketed to a thousand. Point by point, Tom guided the girl through what he'd taken to calling the "Riddle Edition Bible," and every lesson seemed to sink into her like water into dry ground.
...
The headmaster's office.
The notebook on the desk buzzed without pause, fracturing Dumbledore's concentration completely. He sighed and finally pulled the enchanted notebook toward himself.
There was only one person in the world capable of bombarding him like this: Grindelwald.
Sure enough, flipping it open revealed several more pages wasted on nothing but Grindelwald's usual nonsense.
[Grindelwald: Dumbledore, I've recently taken on a new subordinate. Care to guess who?]
Dumbledore kept his expression neutral, though alarm bells were going off somewhere deep in his chest. He didn't answer for a long while.
Far off in Durmstrang, Grindelwald felt no urgency at all. He waited it out at his leisure. He knew Dumbledore. The man wore composure like a mask, but underneath it his curiosity ran deep, and he'd never be able to resist for long.
Sure enough, faint handwriting eventually bloomed across the page.
[Dumbledore: Whatever help you gather, the pact is already signed. Nothing you do now changes the outcome.]
Grindelwald chuckled and wrote back, taking his time with it.
[Grindelwald: I'm quite satisfied with things as they stand. Why would I want to change anything? I only wanted to share something interesting with you.]
[Grindelwald: Robert Graves. You haven't forgotten the name, have you? The man was wandering about like a stray with nowhere to go, so I took pity and gave him a home.]
Dumbledore's gaze sharpened, and something in his chest sank slowly downward.
Robert Graves had gone over to Grindelwald?
It was the equivalent of Scrimgeour defecting to Voldemort. Once it came to light, the panic and fallout it would cause would far outstrip whatever practical strength Robert himself actually brought to the table.
And it took no great leap of logic to guess that Robert almost certainly hated Tom, and likely Dumbledore too, with a burning passion, probably scheming for revenge at every waking moment. There was no telling how much trouble that could eventually cause.
Dumbledore thought it over for a moment, and an idea struck him.
[Gellert, don't you think highly of my student? You know exactly what history stands between Tom and Robert. Aren't you worried Tom might hold this against you?]
[Grindelwald: Everything in service of the greater good. If Robert can bring me more, why would I turn him away?]
[Dumbledore: Forgive my bluntness, but I hardly think he offers anything comparable to Dr. Riddle.]
[Grindelwald: Then you truly are behind the times. What's happening in North America right now is rather extraordinary, actually...]
With the rhythm of the conversation firmly in his own hands, Grindelwald began, unhurried, laying out the Aztec ruin and the fragments of detail Robert had shared with him.
Much like Tom's own provocation earlier, this was another open scheme, no deception buried in it, nothing invented or misleading. Every word of it was true.
Even if Dumbledore showed no reaction now, the thorn would still lodge itself in his mind, a splinter of awareness toward North America that would only grow sharper as events over there escalated, until eventually he wouldn't be able to help himself from getting involved.
Having said his piece, Grindelwald ended the conversation without ceremony, leaving Dumbledore alone with his notebook, brow furrowed in thought.
"A prehistoric civilization. Some unnamed sacrificial rite..."
The old man let out a quiet, weary sigh. "Why can't things ever simply stay peaceful?"
Pull one thread and the whole tapestry moved. He'd only just managed to settle Grindelwald down, and now Robert had gone and stirred his curiosity right back up. To keep Grindelwald from getting his hands on any power capable of tipping the larger conflict, Dumbledore would have no choice but to step into this himself as well.
Exhausting, all of it.
...
Two days later, in the study space.
Inside Joan's room, Tom took charge of dictation while Ariana and Ravenclaw stood by as witnesses, the three of them fussing over a visibly nervous Joan.
"Abandon!"
Tom cleared his throat. With every word he called out, Joan dutifully wrote it down, and with every word, Ravenclaw's heart sank a little further.
That absurd-sounding religious framework had actually worked?
And Tom had claimed there was more to it besides, some additional method he'd used to strengthen the girl's memory beyond the obvious.
Ravenclaw's curiosity was practically boiling over now, desperate to know the exact mechanics behind it. But Tom had no intention of indulging her at the moment. His eyes kept flicking toward the terms of their wager instead, and by the time Joan successfully wrote out her two hundredth word, his gaze had taken on a weight and intent all its own, as if it had become a physical hand reaching toward her.
Ravenclaw glared at him and said nothing at all, which somehow said everything.
[Ding! Ravenclaw's Approval has reached 50%. Congratulations, Host...]