Chapter 611: A Surprise Prepared for Voldemort

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"Come on, cheers!"

That night, sparse starlight scattered across the lawn. Tom and Andros sat in the small courtyard, clinked glasses, and downed their drinks in one go.

"Ah, that hits the spot." Andros narrowed his eyes in satisfaction.

"The real world really is different from your system space. That place is too perfect. It’s like being trapped in an endless eternity where nothing ever changes. You can’t even feel the pleasant buzz of drinking."

Tom slowly worked through a chicken wing. "Alcohol leads to mistakes. Drink less."

The courtyard felt calm and relaxed. Despite the age gap, they were close—more than friends across generations, more like family.

Andros’s place was absolutely irreplaceable. He had been Tom’s first teacher and, during Tom’s weakest period, his greatest source of security.

He was the beginning of everything.

As they chatted, Andros brought up the Amazon ruins.

"Hic! Don’t rush the ruins yet." Tom waved his hand. After finishing a bottle of whiskey in a short time, his cheeks were faintly flushed. "I’ve seen Castelobruxo’s efficiency. And according to the house-elves, Isabella is still brewing potions."

"I’m even thinking about secretly helping them. At this level, they’ve been dragging out a potion for half a month."

Andros frowned. "How about... I just beat them and force the location of the ruins out of them?"

Tom looked at him in surprise. "Is that something you should be saying?"

Andros didn’t care. "It’s not like I’m planning to kill anyone. Just using simpler, rougher methods."

"Let’s forget that." Tom rejected the idea and instead took out an apple.

"A Golden Apple?" Andros looked surprised. "Has the second batch already matured?"

Tom smiled mysteriously. "This one is fake."

"Fake?"

Andros took the apple and examined it carefully for a long time, but couldn’t find a single flaw or trace of magical transformation.

"Why make a fake Golden Apple?" he asked, puzzled.

"To dig a pit for Voldemort. Didn’t you want to avenge Ariana? This is an opportunity."

Andros’s eyes sharpened. "You talk. I’ll do it. We’ll make sure he gets a very big surprise."

"Well...."

"Voldemort’s actually a lot like me, right now. He’s interested in ruins and legendary treasures."

"Make up some story about the Golden Apple, then fabricate a ruin and lure him there. That shouldn’t be hard."

Tom’s plan was simple: draw the snake out of its hole. Using a real Golden Apple as bait would be overkill, so he decided to use a fake.

He drew on the divine power within his body and combined it with leftover scraps of Golden Apple flesh to create a "counterfeit."

Honestly, even that felt overly cautious to him.

Voldemort was trash. Arrogant, short-sighted. Expecting him to recognize divine power was harder than expecting Snape to give Harry house points.

The only reason Tom bothered making something realistic enough to pass for the real thing was pure compulsiveness.

And so, the important part in this plan wasn’t the Golden Apple. It was the story... a believable chain of events, something that would feel completely natural and logical.

That wasn’t easy to do, especially now that Little Voldy had been playing it too safe lately.

Still, this wasn’t something he needed to discuss with Andros. When it came to trickery and deception, Morgan was the expert. And Ravenclaw was no slouch at spinning stories either. Add himself to the mix, and the three of them together could probably swindle Voldemort right down to his underwear.

"Forget that for now. Let’s keep drinking."

Tom picked up the bottle and refilled both his and Andros’s glasses. They downed several more bottles before finally heading to bed, pleasantly drunk.

Lying on the bed, Tom felt unusually relaxed.

Sometimes, men need their own space. Being surrounded every day by beauties was certainly enjoyable, but after a while it still became exhausting.

Moments like this, being alone, doing nothing at all, felt comfortable in their own way.

...

..

After sleeping straight through the night, Tom woke to find Andros already up. Early in the morning, he was off in a remote corner of the pocket world doing "rehabilitation."

His method was simple: cast magic over and over again, rediscover the old sense of control, let his body adapt to magic, and let magic grow accustomed to his body.

Hard to tell whether he was working this hard for Voldemort... or for Grindelwald.

Once he realized Andros was recovering quickly and no longer easy to bully, Grindelwald fled back to Durmstrang overnight. He hadn’t even entered the study space these past few days, fully committed to hiding as much as possible.

But had he never considered that the longer Andros bottled up that fire in his heart, the worse it would be for him later?

Shaking his head, Tom didn’t disturb Andros and quietly left the pocket world.

He didn’t want to get involved in their roughhousing anyway. No one was going to die. At worst, someone would end up half-dead.

...

The first class that morning was History of Magic. Professor Binns’s terrifying reputation had already spread from Hogwarts to all six academies.

The students from other schools had never seen a professor so capable of putting people to sleep. Meanwhile, the professors and headmasters were stunned by Hogwarts’ frugality.

When they learned that Professor Binns had been working at Hogwarts for nearly a thousand years without pay, their first thought was how much money that must have saved.

Why didn’t their own schools have such dedicated ghosts?

People like Okeye and Kamiya Akihiko were already thinking about how, once they returned home, they might encourage the "birth" of ghost professors at their own academies.

And so... Today’s class collapsed as usual, students dropping like flies. Professor Binns, however, acted as if he saw nothing, continuing to send more victims off to dreamland with his hypnotic droning.

Tom lay slumped over his desk, appearing to catch up on sleep. In reality, his consciousness had already entered the study space. He called Ravenclaw and Morgan over to discuss how to prepare a suitable "scripted game" for Voldemort.

"You mean we are the experts in tricking people?"

Ravenclaw looked at the boy differently.

Tom didn’t care about her slightly offended tone. He waved it off casually. "I even created a perfect fake Golden Apple. That bumpkin Voldemort would almost certainly be tricked."

"As long as we polish the trap and the information source, it’s enough to make him believe."

He grinned. "You two bad women just need to put in a little effort and he’ll swallow it whole."

Morgan didn’t mind being called a bad woman. Ravenclaw, however, began grinding her teeth and reached out to pinch him. Tom dodged nimbly.

Tom raised a brow. "Not convinced? Want to settle it in the arena?"

"Hmph. Brute. All you think about is fighting. Is destruction the only use of magic? Why is your head filled with nothing but violence?"

"...Because violence makes other people think about the other uses of magic. Otherwise, how do you think house-elves were domesticated?"

"You..."

Ravenclaw shot him a vicious glare, but she didn’t actually suggest heading to the arena to "wake him up."

The reason was simple. She might... not be able to beat him anymore.

Tom was tempering his bloodline internally while expanding his understanding of magic externally. Even though he hadn’t reached the Legendary tier yet, many of her spells were already easy for him to dismantle.

After consulting Morgan, Ravenclaw made up her mind. If she could avoid fighting this kid, she would.

She was a cultured person. Cultured people reasoned things out.

...

..

In less than an hour, Morgan and Ravenclaw, trading ideas back and forth, wove a flawless net.

Tom thought it over briefly and was certain Voldemort would step right into the trap.

Putting himself in Voldemort’s shoes, if he didn’t know the truth, he’d probably fall for it too. And Voldemort, no matter how afraid of death he was, wouldn’t be able to resist his own greed.

Tom withdrew from the study space and glanced at the clock at the back of the classroom. Only a few minutes remained before the end of class. He also glanced at Daphne.

The girl’s face was buried completely in the crook of her arms. Tom assumed she was sleeping and didn’t pay further attention, instead staring blankly at Professor Binns’s translucent figure.

But if he had looked more closely, he would have noticed the young lady’s shoulders shifting slightly.

It was a habit Daphne had whenever she was thinking.

Clearly, she wasn’t asleep at all. She was pondering a very serious problem.

How could she make sure that whenever someone mentioned Tom, the "Mrs. Riddle" that came to mind... would be her?

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