Tom was a common enough name. It wasn't the name that made Andrew want to kill him—it was everything that had come before. All that talk of uniting the world's wizards into one family, along with a host of preparations plainly meant for human experimentation, told Andrew that this Mr. Tom was bad news.
Even if he'd called himself Dumbledore, Andrew would have investigated him just the same.
He remembered Dumbledore saying that the man was in Australia. Anyone capable of schemes this elaborate was either Voldemort or connected to him, and deserved to be taken seriously.
Andrew reassured Bill without giving anything away, found out where the laboratory was, then made time to report to Dumbledore.
"Interesting. Truly interesting. Adjusting, cultivating, shaping... How fascinating."
Tom gave his wand a gentle wave and cleared away the thirty-odd culture vessels before him. They contained nothing but the remains of failed experiments, yet they had earned the honor of laying the groundwork for his wizard bloodline—no, his wizard gene project.
With young Bill out of the way, Tom could finally experiment without restraint. What he had learned about breeding magical creatures at Hogwarts, combined with Muggle biology, had yielded dazzling results in his hands.
"Squibs are terribly hard to find. But infiltrating the Ministry of Magic to get the birth records would be too difficult right now. If I were in England, Malfoy and the others would have obtained them for me already."
Tom filled in his experimental notes, a broad smile on his handsome face.
He was certain he had found the right path: identify the genes that made a wizard, then express them through curses. That would grant power—and control.
As for Death Eaters, there was no shortage of desperate people willing to chase power. He could give it to