By the time I turned four, the tracking wards Dumbledore had buried in my skin were gone. Every spark of surveillance and subtle charm now hummed quietly around Dudley instead of me. Let the old man watch the wrong child.
Minzy's efforts had tripled the Potter household's reach. Fifty elves now served in secret—gatherers, spies, and messengers hidden in plain sight. Through them I began what I preferred to call future security plans. Others might someday call it conquest.
Information was power, and I collected it ruthlessly. A suggestion whispered here, a hex-hidden charm there; contracts rewritten by invisible quills while their signers believed the changes their own ideas. Within a year I had placed useful people—business leaders, minor politicians, researchers—under a quiet web of magical influence.
I told myself it was necessary. The wizarding world was complacent, and the Muggle world dangerous. Someone had to bridge the two before another war tore them apart.
Yet sometimes, when I watched my newest ally—a brilliant young executive named Crystal—speak my ideas as though they were hers, I felt that old thrill again: the pulse of power, the echo of Riddle's ambition whispering that this was destiny.
History would call me many things. But history, I intended, would be written by me.