The Ministry of Magic's finances were already stretched to breaking point. Between the mass procurement of new equipment and the purchase of the WhatsApp notebooks along with all their accompanying supplies, even a thorough raid through Gringotts hadn't been enough to plug the hole.
And then, at precisely the worst possible moment, letters arrived. More than ten families, including the Malfoys, the Rosiers, and the Selwyns, all sent word on the same day, each informing Fudge that their donation for the following year would be reduced by thirty percent.
Were they trying to kill him?
Reduced by thirty percent? He hadn't even gotten to beg them to increase their contributions by thirty percent yet, which was the conversation he'd been mentally rehearsing. And now, before he'd even opened his mouth, the ground had been pulled out from under him.
Every single one of these families had one thing in common. Their children attended Hogwarts.
Fudge dearly wanted to write back and tell them all that if their sons and daughters were ever taken hostage, they should let him know immediately, and he would personally lead every Auror in the Ministry through the castle gates to drag the culprit out by the collar.
Unfortunately that particular fantasy had to remain exactly that. There was no evidence. Even his certainty that this was Tom's doing was nothing more than an educated guess. Both sides understood it perfectly well, and neither would ever say so out loud.
After a full round of lobbying that produced absolutely nothing, Fudge accepted the unavoidable conclusion. The root of the problem was Tom. Until Tom gave the word, not one of those families was going to change their minds.
What Fudge couldn't begin to understand was why a group of proud pure-blood families would be so thoroughly obedient to a student from a Muggle background.
The truth was that Fudge had missed the most important point entirely. It wasn't about how fearsome Tom was, though that was certainly a factor. When a student's Patronus destroyed over a hundred Dementors in a single night, more than a few people had found their sleep disturbed afterward.
No, the real issue was Fudge himself. Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic, was the softest target in the room. Had the Minister been Bones or Scrimgeour, the pure-blood families would never have dared pull a move like this. But with Fudge, everyone had already taken the full measure of the man. And once people knew exactly how far they could push someone, they pushed without hesitation.
...
A few days later, a message arrived from Fudge. Tom read it, and felt a quiet flicker of surprise.
He'd expected Fudge to hold out longer than this. It hadn't even been a week, and already the man was reaching out to negotiate, his posture extremely conciliatory.
[Tom: Minister, I hold no personal grievance against you. I simply found an opportunity, and it would have been a waste not to use it.]
In London, Fudge practically sagged with relief.
Good. There were demands to be met. There was something he wanted. That was workable.
What he'd feared most was that Tom simply disliked him on principle, that this was personal and irrational. That kind of enemy couldn't be reasoned with or bought off. But this? This he could handle.
[Fudge: Mr. Riddle, name your terms. I will do my best to accommodate you.]
[Tom: Minister, what I would like for Christmas is a First-Class Order of Merlin. What do you think?]
An Order of Merlin.
Fudge stared at the words for a long moment.
Why on earth was Riddle so passionate about a piece of ceremonial decoration that served no practical function? He had one already. Even going by Dumbledore's actual accomplishments, the man deserved at minimum five of the things, with no upper ceiling, and yet he only had one. Why? Because past a certain point, collecting them stopped meaning anything.
And yet here was Tom, apparently willing to orchestrate a coordinated campaign against the Ministry of Magic's funding in exchange for another one.
[Fudge: All of this, just for an Order of Merlin? No other conditions?]
[Tom: Of course. My greatest hobby at the moment, Minister, is collecting prestigious honours.]
[Fudge: But don't you already have one?]
[Tom: The more the better. My goal is to earn at least one First-Class Order for every year I remain at Hogwarts.]
Fudge stared at his notebook in silence for a moment.
He genuinely could not fathom this peculiar hobby. But from where he stood, the condition itself was far from unreasonable. Between Tom's various inventions and the precedent already set by his first Order, the biggest obstacle had long since been cleared. It was exactly like a moral line in the sand. Once you'd crossed it the first time, everything after that came easily.
So Fudge agreed without much further deliberation, promising that a satisfying gift would reach Tom by Christmas. Tom, equally cooperative, expressed his intention to generously donate fifty thousand Galleons toward the Ministry's operational expenses.
The money honestly meant very little to him at this point. He was accumulating tens of thousands of Galleons every single day, more than he could meaningfully spend. If he could have exchanged gold for achievement points on a one-to-one basis, he would have handed over every last coin without a second thought.
...
The pleasantly lopsided conversation concluded, and Tom returned to his meditation chamber to study.
He had been making significant strides in both of his primary training disciplines lately.
The first was mental segmentation. He could now split his focus cleanly into three parallel streams of thought simultaneously, each running independently without bleeding into the others. The strain on his mind was considerable and required careful time management under normal conditions, but inside the learning space that problem ceased to exist entirely. The space kept him in peak condition at all hours, which had dramatically compressed his learning curve.
The second was Ravenclaw's memory magic. His Memory Seeds had been refined to a point where he was satisfied with them. The remaining challenge was finding alternative methods of applying the technique through puppet constructs rather than direct contact.
While Tom worked, Ravenclaw sat nearby and watched.
At some point, she drifted.
She had never, in all her long years, seen someone of Tom's age work like this. Even during the school day, while he was attending lessons or spending time with his young girlfriend, part of his attention was always split off and running calculations inside the learning space. At night he went even further, throwing himself into study for hours on end without pause.
She had been considered brilliant in her own time. But she had never been this relentless.
"Tom." Ravenclaw spoke suddenly, cutting into his work. He looked up, puzzled.
"Why do you push yourself this hard?" She asked the question that had been forming in her mind for some time, the one she couldn't quite resolve on her own. "You have already surpassed your peers by a distance that isn't even worth measuring, and most of the world's adults as well. Simply going through the motions would still carry you to the top eventually. So why? Why this constant, unrelenting intensity?"
Tom didn't answer immediately. He considered the question properly, turning it over, and then looked up at her with a smile that was bright and unguarded in a way he rarely showed.
"Perhaps," he said, "it's because I know what it felt like to be ordinary. When you've lived without, and then suddenly see the chance to have everything... you don't let go. You can't."