Tom walked back out of the common room.
He was headed to the Owlery.
To know, the Owlery was a room on the top of Hogwarts Castle’s West Tower, where the school owls and the owls belonging to students lived during the school year.
Tom was about to borrow one of the school’s public owls.
He needed to place an order for potion ingredients from Diagon Alley and prepare some recovery and fatigue-relief potions for Daphne.
Training by draining your magic like that could be pretty rough in the short term, but the benefits were worth it—it could unlock hidden potential and increase your maximum magic capacity.
That capacity was mostly limited by natural talent, sure, but this kind of training helped you reach your peak much faster than usual.
As for the repetitive spell-casting itself—it was like laying a foundation.
A lot of spellwork came down to intuition and reflex. Building that kind of "muscle memory" made future learning much easier.
All of these methods were drawn from Andros’ experience, and Tom followed them to the letter. If anything, Andros pushed him even harder.
Hard work makes up for lack of talent. But if you do have talent, then you’d better work even harder—otherwise, all that potential is just a pretty illusion.
As for ordinary people... they train to surpass other ordinary people. That’s how the whole competitive culture starts.
Andros had said more than once: compared to wizards of the past, modern witches and wizards just had it too easy. Comfortable. Lazy.
They had well-organized, systematic education—and yet the general magical ability of the average wizard had dropped off.
To him, Tom was still a rookie... but even as a rookie, he could already defeat most adult wizards with ease.
Back in Andros’ era? That would’ve been unthinkable.
Even if you couldn’t win, you fought like your life depended on it—literally. You took a chunk out of your enemy no matter what.
The holidays were over.
They always flew by in the blink of an eye, and Sunday night had come around faster than anyone expected.
By now, Slytherin had finished selecting its new Shadow prefects for each year group.
Tom hadn’t expected it would be this fast. He was genuinely surprised to discover that Slytherin was hiding so many... hidden gems.
If he hadn’t stirred things up and lit a fire under everyone’s ambitions, these students might’ve kept their talents under wraps all the way until graduation.
But now there was a problem.
Once the school assigns prefects (official ones), those positions aren’t changed lightly. Even a Head of House, like Snape, only has the power to recommend someone—they can’t directly appoint or remove prefects unless a serious offense is involved.
And since the official prefects hadn’t done anything terribly wrong, Snape had no real grounds to replace them.
So, there was a real conflict now: the students were following a new kind of leadership—the shadow prefects. So who were students supposed to listen to? Shadow or Official.
In the end, Snape made his position clear: power comes first.
The six official prefects would retain their titles in name only. In reality, they were nothing but figureheads now—puppets who had to follow the orders of the shadow prefects. It was both a punishment and a challenge.
If they wanted to earn their authority back, they’d have to fight for it—and win.
It worked. The original prefects were so humiliated that their faces turned green. They didn’t stick around the common room for long. As soon as Snape finished making the announcement, they rushed out—probably off to find a quiet spot to train like mad and plan their comeback next term.
Meanwhile, the new "shadow prefects" were surrounded by excited students. People naturally gravitated toward the strong. Before, it hadn’t been clear who the real center of their year group was. Now, it couldn’t be more obvious.
The atmosphere in the Slytherin common room was buzzing with excitement. Everyone seemed happy—except for Malfoy and his two sidekicks.
They were sitting stiffly in a corner, completely out of sync with the rest of the room. Malfoy glared daggers at Tom, who was now surrounded by admirers.
After spending the night literally hanging there—he’d only woken up because he’d fallen and hit the floor—Malfoy was in a world of pain. But the worst part wasn’t physical.
It was the humiliation.
Being mocked and defeated by Tom in front of everyone? That had completely shattered his pride.
Malfoy had never been humiliated like that in his entire life.
The moment he’d returned to the dorms and sobered up, the first thing he did was write a furious letter to his father.
He wanted that filthy Mudblood expelled and sent straight back to his pathetic Muggle world.
And as far as he was concerned, there was no reason it wouldn’t work.
His father was on the Hogwarts Board of Governors, after all.
If the entire board agreed, even Dumbledore couldn’t protect the boy.
Malfoy glanced at the clock. His letter should’ve arrived by now.
"Shadow prefect, huh?" he muttered under his breath. "Let’s see how you like it when you’re not even allowed to be a student anymore."
Cursing Tom under his breath, Malfoy stood up and stormed out of the common room with Crabbe and Goyle in tow.
If Snape hadn’t ordered all students to attend that meeting earlier, he wouldn’t have shown his face at all—not with everyone staring at him like that.
Wiltshire – Malfoy Mansion
Malfoy’s guess had been right—his father, Lucius Malfoy, had indeed received the letter.
But things didn’t go quite how Draco had imagined.
Lucius didn’t storm off to Hogwarts in a rage. He didn’t immediately call for Dumbledore’s head or demand punishment for Tom.
Instead, he just stood there, pale as a ghost, hands shaking as he held the letter.
All because of one name:
The Dark Lord had always claimed to be of pure blood. That was part of his whole image. But the truth? Well... the elite pureblood families did have their secrets.
He hadn’t come out of nowhere. Back at Hogwarts, he’d been the top student—brilliant, dangerous, charismatic. His origins weren’t entirely a mystery.
Those with connections and sharp ears knew the truth: Voldemort had been plucked out of an orphanage by Dumbledore and brought into the wizarding world. That orphan eventually became the most feared Dark wizard in history.
Of course, that was where most people stopped digging. The deeper truth—his connection to the Gaunt family, his Muggle father, the madness in his bloodline—was something only a few knew.
And none of them were eager to talk about it.
Why? Because exposing Voldemort’s true origins wouldn’t just enrage him—it would turn the whole ideology of the Death Eaters into a laughingstock.
A bunch of so-called "pureblood supremacists" blindly following a half-blood orphan?
So, the Death Eaters all quietly agreed to uphold the lie: Voldemort was pureblood. Whether or not it was true didn’t matter. The idea was more important than the facts—it gave them a cause to rally behind and manipulate.
Lucius had learned all this from his father.
And now, all these years later, that name had resurfaced.
A Slytherin. Brilliant. Charismatic. Ruthless.
"Could it be... him?"
Lucius felt a chill crawl down his spine. He didn’t want to believe that Voldemort had returned. But the fear was eating at him. He needed answers.
And so, trembling but determined, Lucius made a decision.
He would go see Dumbledore in person tomorrow.
If this "Tom Riddle" wasn’t that Tom... then fine. He could deal with his son’s little grudge afterward.
Then things were about to get a lot more complicated.