Snake Boy

9 - Explanations

After eating breakfast under Severus' watchful eye and consuming his daily potions, Tom lay back on the pillows.

"You are awfully quiet Frost, are you alright?"

"Yes Tom. Your friend seemed very angry with you."

"A little, but he was mostly worried. Did you not understand what he said?"

"No."

"Odd. When I bonded with my last familiar, my magic allowed her to understand English and from speaking with Oma, I know she was also able to understand English after her bonding."

Frost just blinked.

"Will you tell me now what made you ill Tom?"

"Interested in that aren't you? Well I'll have to give a little history. When I was younger I was of a political mind." At Frosts questioning look he clarified, "I wanted to be one of the Wizards who governed all the Wizarding nests."

"Ahhh."

"Anyway, my ideas were not well received to put it mildly and I made some enemies, one of them being Albus Dumbledore."

Tom noticed the end of Frosts tail lay over his thigh and that he was unconsciously stroking it with his left hand. He considered stopping the action but couldn't make himself do it. He couldn't remember having this compulsion to touch Nagini.

"Dumbledore was just a professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but he was from a very powerful pureblood family and had lots of connections. He used his influence to twist my work and vilify me. I had gained my own advocates, people who knew the truth and not the twisted version he was feeding everyone but he managed to sully their reputations as well."

"He got me blackballed from the Ministry and polite society but I refused to give up. I knew things had to change so I moved behind the scenes. I met with Wizards at parties thrown by my supporters and convinced more and more to listen."

Tom paused, taking a sip from the glass of vitamin enhanced water on his bedside table.

"Now Dumbledore had defeated the last great Dark Wizard Grindenwald, which is one of the reasons he had so much political pull. He was a hero and I was a nobody, a mudblood orphan; powerful magically but still a nobody. But people were still listening to me and as the number of my supporters grew, Dumbledore hatched a plan to get rid of me and cement his control of the Wizarding World."

"When I was twenty-five years old he came to me speaking of working together. 'Walking the path of compromise together' he called it until he had me alone. Then he cursed me – a curse created by the Dumbledore family and unheard of outside them."

"And it made you ill," Frost inquired.

Tom laughed ruefully. "In a manner of speaking – it made me crazy. It turned me into a bloodthirsty lunatic whose only ambition was to take over the Wizarding World using whatever means necessary. I tortured and I killed..."

His voiced cracked and he took another drink of the water to give him time to collect himself.

"The curse was slow; so as to not arouse suspicion and my followers were drawn into the web of killing and torture just as slowly. They did not realize something was wrong until it was too late. I was too powerful for them to escape and by then their own crimes kept them from turning to the Ministry for help."

"I was dubbed the new Dark Lord and Dumbledore used his status and the Wizarding World's fear to become Headmaster of Hogwarts. From there he could touch the lives of every Wizarding family in Britain. He began grooming his followers from the first year, gaining their trust and support, instilling his own ideals. He used his harmless old man image to misdirect any suspicion of possible wrong doing and his reputation as a hero to keep the reigns of control outside the school. I'm told the current Minister of Magic owls him every day for advice."