The train smelled of boiled cabbage and possibility. Curtains drew back to frames of wet English countryside. Outside, fields blurred into hedgerows and the line hummed like a sleeping engine — a neat metronome counting down the time until I would step into a room that knew my name because history told it to.
I was eleven, a child in appearance and a general in disposition. My magic was a strange, split thing: a vast, heavy pool of soul energy stitched to a young, not‑yet‑mature core. If it came down to raw, fully matured duel power, Albus Dumbledore would almost certainly win. He had the years and a body that had finished growing into itself. But instinct, preparation, tools, and the Elder Wand made me dangerous in an entirely different register. I was not a rival to be crushed outright; I was a strategy to be outmaneuvered — and I intended to be the one doing the maneuvering.
The Sorting hat did not worry me. I had placed myself once in Slytherin; I would do it again. Ambition is a green light and Slytherin the road. It was where the heirs and the network waited.
Yet my intentions reached farther than a single House. Hogwarts was a crossroads. There were faces on the chessboard that mattered as much as the pieces I intended to place.
Harry Potter, the scar and the prophecy: he was a living fault line in the world, a danger because of the love that had once protected him and because events had a habit of congealing around his name. He might be a child, but he mattered. I would approach him not as an enemy but as an axis — to be tilted, not shattered.
Hermione Granger: a glandular hunger for knowledge wrapped in stubborn moralism. She would be useful if her curiosity could be bent toward methods instead of mere questions. Knowledge compels the curious; secrets tempt them.
Neville Longbottom: a raw gem disguised as awkwardness. Some people merely needed context and patronage rather than promises. I could be that context: a mentor draped in the trappings of opportunity.
Draco Malfoy: the shape of privilege, the son of Lucius; easy alliance if one played family and ambition at once. There were strings I had already begun to tug — Regulus, Lucius, the Black fortune — and Draco was a ready instrument if plucked correctly.
Fred and George Weasley: chaos with commerce. Talent without the right audience. Offer them toys and a place where their mischief could be turned to profit, and they would be loyal — or at least useful.
The compartment between the third and fourth carriage stank of boiled potatoes and loud boys. I sat by the window with a book I had already read twice, pretending to read more. Strategy tasted like iron and parchment. The other children laughed and bickered; I catalogued their gestures, the way their hands flexed when they lied or when they told the truth. Sound is a signal; small tells add up.
When the hat finally warmed my head, it was like meeting an old acquaintance. It sang its questions — ambition, cunning, fear, loyalty — into the warm interior of my mind, and I heard that soft voice thinking, measuring.
Slytherin, of course.
Green light, serpent-skillet.
I remembered the taste of the common room's shadowed stone. I remembered the corridors and the cold suits of armour. I remembered whispers that move like moths in libraries.
Landing in Slytherin would be the easy part. The hard work began with people.
I made a plan then — not a single map but a menu of approaches, each calculated to the psychology of its target.
— Harry Potter: Do not attack the love that shields him. Never provoke the green cord that might pull Lily's protection across him again. Instead, be curious. Observe him. Plant questions that lead to self‑doubt, nudges that make him test paths I have already tried and found profitable. Friendship is a longer play; a well‑placed favor at the right moment can tilt a life.
— Hermione Granger: Offer knowledge as a gift, not a bribe. Give her the missing piece to a problem she is already obsessed with; then add a small taboo that promises faster answers. Most geniuses will accept the taboo if the math works. Make her feel chosen and therefore indebted to the choice.
— Neville Longbottom: Sponsorship. A gardener tends a seed and gets a tree. Quiet patronage is often more powerful than thunderous speeches. Teach him a ritual of competence in secret; confidence becomes loyalty.
— Draco Malfoy: Feathers of family pride. Invite him into the orbit of old blood and show him how much easier the world becomes when one's enemies are quietly removed or bought. Use Lucius, use introductions, use name and ease. Connect ambition to comfort.
— Fred & George Weasley: Commerce over conscience. Offer them a market that makes their mischief profitable and impossible to resist. The twin's loyalty bought cheaply with the promise of invention and wealthy clients.
My strategies were not cruel for cruelty's sake. They were practical manipulations of incentives. My training under Grindelwald had taught me that power moves in lines of advantage — money, knowledge, reputation, fear. Each child could be swayed along at least one of those axes.
The train pulled into Hogsmeade and the world began to tilt again. Platform Nine and Three-Quarters smelled of warm stone and the steady tide of new arrivals. I stepped down with a purpose I felt in my bones; even the body's smallness did not lessen the weight of intent.
At the edge of the platform I allowed myself one private thought: Dumbledore is clever, dangerous, and unpredictable. If he ever realised how complete I am—how many shards of soul I had reassembled, how much of history I held in my head—he would adjust. He would mobilise people who hurt in precisely the places I had planned to fortify. But he would never anticipate everything. No one could.
Not yet. Not while I still had years to polish my tools and bond my power into a single, unbreakable instrument. Not while the Horcruxes remained scattered mementos of a past I intended to reclaim.
I walked through the castle doors and felt the eyes of portraits press like questions into my skin. The game had begun in earnest. Children made friends, rivals stamped grudges that lasted for a lifetime, and alliances were seeded in small acts of kindness and cruelty.
I smiled at the thought. The war would come. The chessboard was being set. I had thirteen years to perfect my pieces and a single school year to begin the most important campaign of all: turning adolescence into apparatus.
When the Sorting hat had finished its song in the common room and the staircase had closed, I found a corner and allowed the mask of boyishness to fall into place. Milk and puzzles, polite smiles, the right amount of mischief.
Everything else — the Palantír, the Elder Wand, Sol's black feathers, the ledger of purchases, Regulus moving as instructed — hummed quietly in the background. I had allies in the shadows and war in the architecture of my mind.
Tomorrow I would start small: observe Harry; speak to Hermione; look for Neville in class; loan Draco the right book; tip the twins a story that would make them curious. Plant seeds. Make friends. Hide knives in the joints of smiles. Grow influence like ivy.
I was no longer merely Tom Riddle reborn. I was an order, a plan, a coming storm — eleven years old and patient enough to wait until the world gave me the exact edges I needed.