The headmaster's office sat on the eighth floor.
Dumbledore, ever the courteous host, had already prepared a cup of honey water for Snape. The man only took a perfunctory sip before setting the glass down with a faint clink. His voice was low and sharp, like a blade drawn just enough to warn you it existed.
"Are you certain this isn't You Know Who's work?" Snape demanded. "Some method like magical reincarnation, possession, taking over a body. That kind of… trick."
Dumbledore sputtered, then actually laughed.
"Severus," he said, eyes crinkling behind his half moon spectacles, "it has taken me until today to discover that you possess a remarkable sense of humor. You should tell jokes like that more often. It might even improve your reputation among the staff."
Snape's expression darkened further, which was an achievement in itself. If he were not standing in the office of a wizard he could not defeat, he would have gladly demonstrated what the fury of the Half Blood Prince looked like in practice.
"With wizards like you," Snape said through his teeth, "nothing would surprise me."
Dumbledore shook his head, still amused, though the warmth in his smile softened into something gentler, almost indulgent.
"Severus, you underestimate yourself and overestimate both myself and Voldemort," he replied. "Yes, he has mastered methods most people would struggle to imagine. He invented dark magic the world had never seen before."
He paused, then continued, voice calm but firm.
"Perhaps he could deceive me. But he cannot deceive the founders. Hogwarts would never allow the same person to enter the school twice."
Snape blinked, the tension in his shoulders loosening by a fraction.
As a Head of House, he knew how Hogwarts found young witches and wizards across Britain. The castle kept its own ancient records. Its magic watched, listened, and remembered. If Tom Riddle was truly Tom Riddle, then there would be no second letter. No second admission. No second Sorting.
Dumbledore lifted his cup, not to drink, but almost as if he were warming his hands on it.
"Still," he said, "keep an eye on the boy. Being Sorted into Slytherin surprised even me. With the atmosphere in your House… he may run into trouble."
"Survival of the fittest," Snape said coldly. "Even as Head of House, I cannot interfere too much in conflicts between students. That is one of Slytherin's enduring rules."
Slytherin, more than the other three Houses, was brutally honest about the world. Status mattered. Power mattered. Results mattered. If you could not stand on your own, the House would not carry you. It would step over you.
And even if Snape could interfere, he had no desire to waste time on a student who should have been irrelevant. Harry Potter had arrived. Quirrell had returned changed, twitchy, and laced with a familiar, disgusting undertone. Compared to that, Tom Riddle should have been background noise.
"No, Severus," Dumbledore said, setting his cup down at last. "You misunderstand me."
His blue eyes were bright, almost too bright, as if they saw several steps further than everyone else in the room.
"I mean the other Slytherins may be the ones who run into trouble."
Snape's brow furrowed.
Dumbledore continued, tone gentle, as if explaining something simple to someone who refused to see it.
"Riddle is not Tom. But he resembles Tom in too many ways. His talent is real. And because of where he came from, he has grown accustomed to protecting himself with force. If things become unpleasant, I would prefer he… hold back."
Snape stared at him.
For several seconds, he said nothing at all.
…
It turned out Dumbledore's judgment of people was, as usual, irritatingly accurate.
The first day of term… no, the night before the first day even began, Tom started "educating" his roommates.
After the Sorting feast, Tom followed the Slytherin crowd down into the dungeons. The air grew cooler the deeper they went, the stone sweating with ancient damp. Flickering torchlight stretched shadows along the walls like long black fingers.
The Slytherin common room was exactly what he expected: elegant, cold, and heavy with a kind of quiet pressure. Like stepping into a room where everyone had already decided your value before you opened your mouth.
This year's Slytherin boys numbered twelve in total, which made the dorm assignments clean and simple. Four to a room.
Malfoy took one room with his two shadows, plus a pureblood boy named Monet Selwyn.
Tom's dorm assignment was Blaise Zabini, Cassare Nott, and Theodore Rosier.
The moment they stepped inside their dorm room, Zabini's mouth curled as if he had bitten into something sour.
"Tch. Sharing a dorm with a Muggle born," he sneered, barely bothering to look at Tom properly. "Unlucky."
Then he pointed, as casually as if he were ordering a house elf.
"Hey, Riddle. Go make my bed. Use the sheets I brought. The school ones are absolute rubbish."
Nott chimed in without looking up from his trunk. "Mine too."
Rosier leaned back on his bedpost, grinning like he was watching a comedy. "And bring me water. Hurry up."
The three of them laughed together, the sound bouncing off stone and curtains.
Tom let out a quiet sigh.
When the Sorting Hat had screamed "Slytherin" over his head, he had known something like this would happen. He just had not expected it to happen this fast, before the dormitory door had even fully closed.
He had made plans for a lot of things. How to stay out of Gryffindor's chaos. How to keep professors from staring at him too long. How to avoid Dumbledore's "friendly conversations."
He had not made a plan for this.
Fine, then.
If there was no plan, he would follow instinct.
Tom drew his wand and turned.
"Shockwave Impact."
There was a sharp, invisible blast.
A pressure like a fist of air detonated between the three boys. Zabini, Nott, and Rosier were flung backward, their feet leaving the floor. They hit the wall with three heavy thuds, trunks rattling, bed curtains shaking.
Before any of them could properly gasp, Tom's wand snapped toward an overturned quill holder on the floor. Three feather quills leapt up, twisted, and transformed midair into thick cords that wrapped around the boys with alarming efficiency. Arms pinned. Legs tied. Voices cut short in their throats by pure shock.
Tom flicked his wrist again.
The wand elongated and softened, reshaping into a whip.
The movement was fluid, almost casual, like he was testing a tool he had always owned.
Crack.
Zabini screamed.
The sound was high and ugly, completely stripped of aristocratic pride. The whip had landed across his shoulder and chest. His body convulsed, goosebumps rising instantly, face twisting with pain and disbelief.
Tom did not spare the other two.
Crack. Crack.
Three boys, bound upright by animated cords, began spinning in place as they struggled, wobbling like tops that had been kicked too hard.
In the span of a few breaths, the dorm had gained three human "spinning toys."
Tom counted silently, giving each of them more than ten lashes. Enough to imprint the lesson deep in their nervous systems. Not enough to do lasting harm, but plenty enough to make sure they would remember it every time they considered opening their mouths.
Finally, he stopped.
His tone was almost curious, as if he were genuinely puzzled.
"I was told Slytherins were clever. Cunning. Ambitious. So why are you three this stupid?"
Zabini's eyes were watery and furious, but he could not form a coherent reply.
Tom stepped closer, whip still in hand, and looked down at them.
"You decided to bully me without even checking what I can do," he said lightly. "Did you really think you could eat me alive just because I came from the Muggle world?"
He gave a small, unimpressed laugh.
"Pureblood," he said, voice full of contempt. "How impressive."
"Waaah! I'm telling my mother!" Zabini choked out, tears mixing with rage. "I'll get you expelled!"
"Let me down, Riddle!" Rosier shouted, thrashing in the cords. "Let me down!"
"I was wrong, I was wrong!" Nott pleaded, shaking. "Please stop, don't hit me again!"
They were eleven.
The pureblood superiority had been poured into them by parents and family tradition, not built by experience. Tom's logic, his disdain, his explanations, none of it mattered.
But the whip spoke a language even idiots understood.
And that language did not require permission to be heard.
Tom delivered another short burst of lashes, a guaranteed "ten pull" punishment, just to reinforce the point.
It worked.
Very quickly, the three boys went quiet, sobbing and shaking, eyes wide with something that looked an awful lot like fear.
Tom flicked his wand. The cords loosened and dropped away. Zabini, Nott, and Rosier collapsed onto the floor, then scrambled forward and knelt, heads lowered.
They knelt in front of Tom.
Neatly. Quickly. The way people do when their bodies learn faster than their pride.
"Remember this," Tom said, voice calm, almost gentle now. That was the scariest part.
"From now on, I make the rules in this dorm. If anyone disobeys, breaks my rules, what awaits you is my whip."
He tilted his head, eyes dark with amusement.
"Or," he added, like he was casually considering a menu option, "I hang you naked on the school gates for the whole castle to see."
Three faces went white.
Tom's gaze slid over Rosier, then Nott, lingering with deliberate cruelty.
"Rosier. Nott. Famous names. Sacred Twenty Eight," he said, savoring their flinch. "If I really did that, what do you think your families would do when they heard you got humiliated on your first night?"
He turned his attention to Zabini.
"And Zabini," he said softly, "you kept talking about your mother at the feast. You really want her to find out you became a joke before you even attended your first class?"
The three boys nodded so hard it looked painful.
Too terrifying.
This boy was a monster.
No… not a monster.
A Dark Lord.
Then their minds stumbled and corrected themselves in the only way they could.
The Dark Lord was one of them. Voldemort was theirs.
Tom Riddle felt worse.
Tom Riddle felt like the Dark Lord, except scarier because he was right in front of them and he did not care about their blood at all.
"Don't say I didn't give you a chance," Tom said, retracting the whip back into a wand with a smooth flick.
Then he spoke words that sounded like Slytherin's creed carved into stone.
"We're Slytherin. Winner takes all."
He smiled, but there was no warmth in it.
"If any one of you can beat me, by any method, then you win. And you can repay me a hundred times over. A thousand."
If the Sorting Hat could see how quickly Tom had slipped into the mindset of a snake, it would have bragged about its judgment for a month straight.
Tom's smile faded.
"But if you lose," he said, voice dropping just a little, "you pay the price."
He let silence hang, thick and heavy.
"Understood?"
"Understood!" Zabini, Nott, and Rosier shouted in unison, terrified that anything less than perfect obedience would earn them another lesson.
Inside, something ugly and hot took root.
Hatred.
They swallowed it down, buried it deep where it could grow quietly.
Because Tom had just handed them a promise, and pureblood boys were very good at clinging to promises that benefited them.
Beat him… and they could do anything they wanted.
This humiliation… this pain… they would remember it.
This debt, they would collect.
And as the dorm fell into an uneasy quiet, Zabini's eyes flickered up for a single heartbeat, full of resentment and calculation.
How long would it take to find a way to bring Tom Riddle down?
And when that moment came… would Tom really be as untouchable as he looked tonight?