"What was that supposed to be?"
Back in the study space, Morgan poked Tom with her finger. She had no idea why he'd just done that.
Tom caught her hand and, multitasking, drew his wand and tapped it against Harry's head in the real world. "I just gave Voldemort a hand. If we hadn't helped, who knows if he'd ever get out of there, or when."
Morgan tilted her head. "Isn't that better, though? Leave him there forever and he's basically a living corpse. And that bit of soul fragment inside your classmate might as well not exist. Oh, wait, no. At least that fragment boosted his dark magic talent. If he works at it, he could turn into a decent dark wizard."
Tom shook his head with a smile. "After everything you just saw, you still don't get how tangled up those two are? One of them has to finish the other. That's their fate."
"Even if I did nothing, Voldemort would turn up again sooner or later." Tom sounded rather wistful.
He'd practically forgotten about Voldy, and yet the guy kept stubbornly popping back into his life, like this time.
Fate really was something else. Some things just have to be settled.
Tom kept casting on Harry as he spoke to Morgan. "Honestly, I'm pretty curious what kind of inheritance he picked up in there. But once he's out, it's all mine, isn't it?
"Besides, I know exactly what Voldemort is like. His inferiority complex is bigger than you can imagine. Even without those last few jabs I threw at him, he already hates Herpo to the bone. There's no way he'd tolerate a dark wizard who surpasses him."
"You're awful," Morgan said, pulling a disgusted face at him. She paused, then found the perfect comparison. "A little more sinister than I ever was."
...
"Okay, done." A few minutes later, Tom finally stopped casting.
"What's wrong with Harry?" Sirius asked at once.
He had no idea what Tom had just done. All he'd seen was Tom waving his wand around while streaks of light sank into Harry's mind.
Anyone else, and he'd have been scared out of his wits that they were about to hurt Harry.
But with Tom, he didn't worry at all. After all, even Dumbledore couldn't touch him.
Nobody could stop Tom Riddle from doing whatever the hell he wanted anymore.
"Voldemort's influence, what else?" Tom shrugged and nodded toward the dining room. They went in and left the living room to Harry so he could rest.
Hearing Voldemort's name, Sirius wasn't as terrified as he used to be, but the man was still the Dark Lord, and his expression turned grim.
What Tom said next made Sirius feel even worse. "Voldemort's stuck in some strange place right now. He'll probably come out stronger, but I don't know the details either."
"You can't stop him?" Sirius frowned.
The boy shrugged. "If he were standing in front of me, sure. But right now I don't even know where he is."
"I just set up an Occlumency shield in Harry's mind. It'll cut the link between him and Voldemort for a while, so he can finally get a good night's sleep.
"But spells wear off eventually. The best fix is for him to learn Occlumency himself."
Tom suddenly got very enthusiastic. "I can recommend two teachers. They're probably the two strongest Occlumency masters in Britain.
"The first is Headmaster Dumbledore, but he's been busy lately, so he probably can't give Harry his full attention. The second is my Head of House, Professor Snape."
At the mention of Snape, Sirius looked like he'd swallowed a fly.
"I know about the bad blood between you two." Tom patted Sirius on the shoulder like he had only his best interests at heart. "But for Harry's safety, a lot of things can be set aside, right?"
Sirius was silent for a long time. "I'll think about it carefully."
"Good. I'll talk to Professor Snape beforehand and make sure he gives you a chance to talk. If that's all, Kamio and I will head out."
Tom turned down Sirius's invitation to lunch and took the little fox to Hermione's house. He also invited Penelope over, and the four of them had a barbecue in the garden.
_ _ _
The next day, news of the Mayflower running into a gigantic sea monster showed up in a few newspapers, though it didn't make much of a splash.
There were no photos, just scattered accounts from a handful of people, so outsiders had no way of grasping how huge this so-called sea monster really was, or how it had caused scenes like the end of the world.
The wizards aboard the Mayflower, meanwhile, had completely sobered up. For the rest of the voyage the professors stayed at full alert, slowing the ship at the slightest anomaly and scouting it out thoroughly before moving on.
Twice they ran into things that were purely natural phenomena and couldn't figure them out, so they called Tom over, only to find it was a false alarm. The professors were a little embarrassed about it.
Tom wasn't annoyed or angry in the least. If anything, he felt the professors were just being responsible.
After all, he'd promised Fontaine he'd get these students back to America safely. Stopping by every so often didn't really disrupt his normal life anyway.
.
.
.