The Intelligent Potter

An: If you want to check out the latest chapter of The Intelligent Potter a teensy weensy bit early, please check this story out on webnovel! That said, I hope you enjoy this chapter.

*** Present

Voldemort was not beaten.

He was a man feared all around Britain for a reason.

Voldemort drew his wand forth, and the familiar warm thrum of power greeted him, so unlike the piercing cold of using The Darkness. It was his power.

He wanted to speak the words of the first real spell he had used in over two years, but his throat was completely done for, so he settled for a non-verbal 'Alohomora'.

He walked out of the room, he had a few hours before The Darkness had recovered in its new body and found some new use for him.

Voldemort stumbled as he hobbled out of his Manor… no, The Darkness' Manor.

There was only one place he could go now. One place which was still beyond the reach of The Darkness.

They would probably kill him, but after what he had been through, Voldemort embraced death.

He wanted it.

And there were good chances that he would find it at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Riddle Manor was hardly close to Hogwarts, and Voldemort had yet to gain enough strength to apparate all the way to Scotland, so he found himself using his old muggle knowledge from decades ago, his childhood in a muggle orphanage, to navigate his way to a train station, and found himself on a muggle train to Scotland.

He remembered how much he used to hate muggles, but it was truly astounding how much perspective a year of torture inside one's own body could give a man. He still thought muggles were powerless rats, but he had now realised that he was a rat as well. All insignificant in the face of the power of beings like Darkness and Death.

*** Later

The voice of the conductor of the train woke Voldemort up. A few muggles were looking at him with disgust and fear. He suspected it had something to do with his lack of a nose.

Voldemort flicked his wand, putting a confundus on the stupid muggles.

His magic kept on and on returning to him, as he recovered from the effects of the ritual which The Darkness had performed to bring itself its own body.

He was ready to apparate.

A nearly silent crack brought him to Hogsmeade, to a back alley which he knew for a fact was almost never visited by anyone.

ALMOST never. It seemed Voldemort was having a patch of bad luck, because he heard a bottle shatter against the ground. He looked to see that there was a very very drunk wizard puking in a corner of the alleyway, clearly having exited the Hog's Head, which was just one road away. Despite his inebriated state, he was able to recognise Voldemort.

"T-The Dark Lord," he stammered out before dropping to a knee, or well, trying to. Being drunk, he tripped and fell to the ground right in front of Voldemort.

Then he puked on his shoes.

He hiccuped "Forgive me, my lord."

Clearly this was one of his Death Eaters, they were all over the place now.

"Leave," Voldemort forced out one word, ignoring how his vocal chords pained.

"Thank you, my lord," the Death Eater cried out, before scrambling to his feet and trying to get away as quick as his drunk feet would carry him.

He couldn't let that man tell anybody else.

Voldemort raised his wand, "Ava-" then stopped. Killing a man just before he entered Hogwarts might cause him more pain in the long run. Voldemort did not want pain.

"Obliviate," he said instead, and then followed it up with a nonverbal stupefy. Anybody who came looking for the drunk would chalk up both his lack of consciousness, and his lack of memory to the copious amount of alcohol that he had no-doubt consumed earlier in the evening.

Voldemort walked to Hogwarts. It was not a short walk. As a student, he had always travelled it in a carriage, and the thestrals ran extremely quickly, travelling the entire distance in about 20 minutes. On foot, however, it was a long hour and a half of trudging across the wet Scottish countryside.

'At least winter is over,' Voldemort thought. It would have been truly terrible to have to trudge through snow. As it were, mud and damp grass was all he had to bear, not that it was pleasant at all, but not the worst case scenario.

Finally, Voldemort made it. He was there. In front of the school which he hadn't seen since he tried to take it over, nearly a year ago.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Voldemort took a deep breath. Upon his death, Dumbledore had placed the entire castle underneath an intent-based blood ward, the kind which had been placed upon Harry Potter upon the death of his mother.

He was counting on the 'intent-based' part of the ward. At this point, he meant no harm to any resident of the school. He would have believed that his torture had caused him to become a pacifist… if it wasn't for the fact that he wanted The Darkness to suffer a slow and painful death.

He would truly relish that.

Voldemort let out his deep breath.

He was not entering the school as Voldemort the conqueror, the Dark Lord who was trying to take over the ancient castle.

He was entering as… Tom Marvolo Riddle, one of the castle's own students.

Tom pushed on the gate, and it swung open slowly.

With much apprehension, he put one foot inside the castle, and waited.

Nothing happened. He was okay. He was safe. Hogwarts had recognised him as one of its own. Tom put his other foot inside.

He was home.

He heard a sharp intake of breath, and looked around to see who it was.

Harry Potter.

The boy-who-lived himself was standing there, wide-eyed, looking at Voldemort. He was not accompanied by any other students. He seemed to be on a stroll around the lake, contemplating life, or something like that, Tom assumed.

"You," Tom could hear the pure hate in his voice.

He opened his mouth to say something - anything - to stop the confrontation which the two of them were barreling towards, but he was cut off as a humongous snake of fire tried to swallow him whole.

*** End of Chapter