Continuous Victories

If I don't work hard now, I won't even have the qualifications to speak to him in the future.

So, while Tom rested, Daphne didn't slack off; she gritted her teeth and pushed her magic to the limit.

The two took turns training, struggling from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon, before Daphne finally completed her eighty repetitions.

Daphne's legs were so weak she couldn't stand, her eyes were barely open, and all she wanted was to sleep.

Tom had no choice but to support her back to the Slytherin common room and find an older girl to escort her to the dormitory.

The girl looked at Tom with an exceptionally strange expression, a meaningful smile hanging on her lips; if they weren't so young, she would have imagined all sorts of restricted scenes.

Tom watched them walk into the girls' dormitory staircase before turning back out of the common room.

He needed to go to the Owlery to borrow a public owl and send a letter to the apothecary in Diagon Alley to buy ingredients for a restorative potion for Daphne.

Repeatedly draining one's magic was painful in the moment, but it had many benefits: it could develop potential, raise the magic ceiling, and help one reach the peak of their talent faster.

Dull, repetitive spellcasting was about laying a foundation, turning magic into a physical instinct so that learning new spells later would be easier.

These techniques were all taught to him by Andros, and that old man had been even stricter with him.

Andros often lamented that wizards today were too comfortable; despite having a perfect magical system, their core strength was not what it used to be.

In his day, even if you couldn't defeat an enemy, you had to fight to tear a piece of flesh off them—unlike wizards today, who complained endlessly at the slightest hardship.

The holidays flew by, and in the blink of an eye, it was Sunday night; the selection for the Shadow Prefects of each Slytherin year had concluded.

But trouble had arrived: Snape's judgment was, indeed, not very good.

The fifth-year male and female prefects and the sixth-year female prefect—all three official prefects had crashed and burned, beaten soundly by ordinary students.

Tom was also surprised: he hadn't expected Slytherin to hide so many people who were quietly making a fortune.

If he hadn't implemented the Shadow Prefect system, these people might have stayed hidden until graduation without ever showing their faces.

The awkward part was that the school-appointed prefects couldn't be replaced easily; Snape had the power to recommend, but not to appoint or dismiss.

As long as they hadn't committed a major offense, there was no reason to remove them. But since the Shadow Prefect and the official prefect were not the same person, who exactly should they listen to?

In the end, Snape upheld the principle of "might makes right": on the surface, those three were still prefects, but they were mere puppets who had to obey the orders of the Shadow Prefects.

This was also a form of punishment; only when they won back the position of Shadow Prefect would the matter be considered settled.

This tactic was very effective; the faces of the three original prefects turned green, and they were too ashamed to stay in the common room.

As soon as Snape finished the announcement, they scurried away, presumably to find a place to train hard, waiting for their revenge next semester.

The common room was lively, with people surrounding the Shadow Prefects of each year; people always gravitated toward the strong. Before, it was unclear who the center of each year was, but now it was clear at a glance.

Only Malfoy and his two lackeys felt out of place.

They huddled in a corner, Malfoy staring at the surrounded Tom with sinister eyes, his teeth itching with hatred.

Having been hung on the wall all night and only waking up when he fell in the morning, the physical pain was nothing—being humiliated in front of everyone was what truly broke his defenses.

He had been pampered since childhood and had never suffered such grievances; even when he had lost duels before, he had never been this embarrassed.

Back in the dormitory, the first thing he did was write a letter to Lucius to complain, wanting to get this "Mudblood" Tom kicked out of Hogwarts.

He calculated that since his father was a school governor, as long as the governors agreed, even Albus Dumbledore could be removed! Counting the time, his family should have received the letter by now.

"Shadow Prefect? Hmph, I'll make sure you can't even remain a student at Hogwarts!"

Malfoy cursed under his breath and left with Crabbe and Goyle; if Snape hadn't required all students to be present, he wouldn't have come out to be looked down upon.

Wiltshire, Malfoy Manor.

Lucius had indeed received his son's letter, but he did not, as Malfoy had hoped, rush to Hogwarts in a fit of rage to demand an explanation.

Instead, his face turned pale, his hand holding the letter trembled, and even his breathing became rapid.

It was all because of those three words on the letter—Tom Riddle.

Voldemort had always claimed to be of pure blood, but no pure-blood family with any real foundation believed it.

He hadn't just popped out of a crack in a rock; he had been the most outstanding student at Hogwarts back in the day, and his records were crystal clear.

Well-informed pure-bloods all knew that the Dark Lord had been brought into the magical world from a Muggle orphanage by Albus Dumbledore.

Eventually, he became a figure everyone feared. As for his grudge with the Gaunt Family, that was an even deeper secret.

No one dared to expose it; besides provoking Voldemort into a rage, they would also be laughed at by the wizards who resisted them.

A group of pure-bloods who prided themselves on their noble blood, following a Muggle-born orphan? It was laughable.

Therefore, all Death Eaters operated under the assumption that Voldemort was pure-blooded; they needed this ideology as a facade to secure their interests, and the truth didn't matter at all.

These pieces of information were things Lucius had heard from his father.

After all these years, he was hearing the name "Tom Riddle" once again—and it belonged to a Slytherin student who was gifted and domineering.

Could it be that he had returned?

Lucius felt a chill run through his body and slumped into his chair, his palms covered in cold sweat.

He couldn't believe that man was still alive, and he made up his mind to go to Hogwarts first thing tomorrow morning to find Albus Dumbledore.

If it was confirmed that this Tom Riddle was not the Dark Lord, it wouldn't be too late to seek justice for his son then.

But if that were the case—he dared not continue that train of thought, his back already soaked in a cold sweat.

Monday morning, Hogwarts was wrapped in a fog so thick it refused to disperse.

A light rain had fallen the night before, and the Great Hall was filled with the aroma of breakfast, mingled with the damp scent of earth. Sleepy young wizards groggily picked at their bread.

They could barely distinguish whether they were chewing on toast or mud.

The Slytherin students were tight-lipped, and the farce in their common room over the weekend hadn't leaked out, yet students from other houses still sensed something was amiss.

The little snakes, who usually moved in twos or threes or kept to themselves, were today gathered in groups, faintly circling a few individuals like a pack of cubs that had found their leader.

No one paid much attention to this, except for Harry and Ron, who stared in bewilderment.

Because of the idea Tom had given them earlier, they had successfully disgusted Malfoy once, so they subconsciously kept a closer eye on Tom.

In the past, only Daphne was ever by Tom's side, and others avoided him like the plague, but today?

Harry rubbed his eyes, suspecting he hadn't fully woken up: "Did Tom slip the Slytherins a love potion overnight?"

"How is it that people are pouring him tea, slicing his sausages, and even spreading his butter? This treatment is even more exaggerated than my cousin Dudley's!"

Ron stared at the mountain of food piled in front of Tom, his eyes as red as his hair, swallowing his saliva in envy.

"This is the life! Why does Riddle get to enjoy such luxury? I want someone to wait on me, too!"