i am lord voldemort ? Tom Riddle

Alternative Timeline XXXIX

•III•

Tom struggled to focus on Grindelwald's words, still too preoccupied with Lae's earlier seemingly meaningless aside. He couldn't shake it, let alone vanish it from his thoughts entirely.

I nearly forgot you were package deal.

What did that even mean? Lae hadn't been looking at him when she said it, her blue-black eyes staring fixedly elsewhere, gone artic. Her tone changed, and Tom just knew the words weren't meant for him, but if not him, then who? It could be nothing; it probably was.

But so too was it strange.

It wasn't the first time he'd gotten the impression that she was conversing with something he couldn't detect, like that time with the thestrals, yet in the same breath it was nothing like that at all. For the first time, he considered the possibility that perhaps the occasional disassociation from her direct surroundings that he always took to be general air-headedness could be something else entirely.

No... Surely not. Surely—

•III•

To everyone's surprise, Grindelwald's introduction turned out to be a very subtle, nuanced affair.

Indeed, it would have been a surprise. It would also have been a lie, since he didn't attain his notoriety by being subtle.

Deeming the crowd large enough as to be impossible for others to obliviate them all later, he announced smoothly, "Non-magical folk, what you see before you," he swept his arm down to indicate the floating rubble they stood atop, "is not an illusion, although you have indeed been gravely tricked. By your leaders. By mine. I am of the secret people hidden by history, written off as folktale and medieval ignorance. I am..." he let the tense quiet build for affect, "a wizard." Despite the floating evidence before their eyes supporting his claims, there was a degree of jeering, mostly by the teenage boys who so far had avoided conscription into the second great muggle war. By far, the people in front of them were vastly female with a spattering of men that doubtlessly found some means of wartime exemption, be it infirmities, age, or skilled labor. Suddenly, Lae wondered to what extent Grindelwald had planned this — if perhaps he'd already had a scheme like this in the works even before her capture — because the circumstances were all too convenient. Overtaking an isolated country debilitated by rationing, grief, and constant bombing when a great number of its citizens were away would be far easier than during peacetime. He could live two hundred years and not find a better opportunity. "Of course, I don't expect you to believe me by my word alone," he said. "I imagine your societal indoctrination has been too thorough for that. I asked myself, what would it take to overwhelm centuries of brainwashing? I could set this whole, hideous city ablaze, raze it to its very foundation, and rebuild it from the ground up to fit my own vision, but how tedious that would be, and not exactly an extension of my good will... What would it take you to believe the unbelievable? A giant? Chimaeras? Surely a dragon might change a few minds," he mused openly. Lae wondered where the hell he planned to acquire a dragon. "Perhaps another day. How about a gift, then. Let me show you what centuries of fear has obscured from your vision."

At his cue, Grindelwald and two of his followers raised their wands, indicating they'd planned this particular bit of theatre ahead of time. As one synchronous movement, the rubble of bombed buildings and streets all around them, a consequence of frequent air-raids, rapidly began to reassemble into their former images prior to the war. Prior to annihilation and death. Not just in the immediate area, either. Stretches of brick and steel as far as she could see rose into long forgotten position, leaving clean, maintained streets possibly even better than before.

The muggles' reaction varied from alarmed to awed to downright terrified. A justified response in all respects. Only a fool wouldn't embrace fear upon being confronted so thoroughly with their own powerlessness, seeing their own future rolling in like a dark fog on the horizon.