Riddle's little snake

The art of buying books

***Things written in cursive are said in Paseltongue***

Curare age: 11 years

Draco enjoyed his time at Hogwarts. The golden trio was one of the only things he disliked there. Of course, he missed his best friend but as he had promised, he wrote her a letter every week. When the schoolyear was finally over the two of them spent almost the entire summer together.

He told Curare everything about his school year. How he got sorted into Slytherin. About the three idiotic Gryffindors. How Slytherin won the house cup with only five points leading and so much more. The two of them would spend hours in the garden, just walking. Or they would play hide n seek in the forest that was on the Riddle's property.

As being part of the richest families there were, Draco was used to have the best of everything and hated anyone who had something that was better. This would then also mean he would dislike Curare. She, without even knowing it really, was the hair of the most powerful family in the entire wizarding world. But Draco never hated her for it. She was his best friend, and he was happy she had a good life.

He did wish he had such a strong connection with his father, like she had with hers, but he also felt sorry for her. Draco couldn't imagine what it was like growing up without a mother. Curare had told him many times that Nagini was her motherly figure, but he just thought it wasn't the same. He knew that Curare's mother, Athena, had tried to kill her when she was just an infant, but it didn't seem to trouble her.

Curare never cried about what her mother had done. She never questioned what she had done to deserve something like that. Tom had told her Athena was just broken and didn't even deserve thinking about. He didn't want to hide the truth from her by not telling her about Athena.

Curare was sitting in the library, a huge old book on her lap, when an owl flew through the window dropping a letter on her lap. The owl hooted in fear when Nagini hissed at it. She didn't like something she didn't know so close to her hatchling, as she called Curare.

The small girl jumped up and raced towards her father's office, almost running into one of the house elves that was cleaning one of the marble statues.

"Daddy, I got my Hogwarts letter just now" she said as soon as she walked into the room. Tom smiled and opened his arms and a few seconds later she found his daughter sitting in his lap. He gave her a loving kiss on her head before taking the letter out of her hands.

"Do you want to go to Hogwarts? You have offers from other schools as well" he said.

She looked at him with a frown. "I don't want to leave you and Nagini" she whispered. Tom sighed. He wanted to tell her he would be fine alone but that would probably be a lie. He would miss her more than anything else and if he could, he would keep her by him all the time.

"But what about Draco? And you won't be alone there. Uncle Sev is there and if you really don't like it you can come home, okay?" Curare nodded.

"Let's go to Diagon Alley tomorrow so we can get your school supplies".

Harry was a little bit disorientated. He had just travelled the first time with floo powder, and it went terribly wrong. So now he found himself in a creepy looking place. Luckily, Hagrid got him out and let him to Borgin and Bots where he also found the other Weasley's. The book shop was packed with people and they were about to leave when Draco walked up to them.

"I bet you liked that Potter. The famous Harry Potter can't even go to a book shop without making the front page" he hissed. Ginny tried to defend Harry, but their bickering was interrupted by Draco's father making an appearance. Things were about to get very ugly when a man with brown hair came up to the group. His robes locked even more prestigious than the ones of Lucius and he had an air of importance around him.

Harry had no idea who this person was, but the others seemed to have a pretty good idea. Lucius bowed his head slightly and Mr. Weasley looked like he was about to faint. "Lord Riddle, it's an honour to meet you" he said with a slight stutter.

"Mr. Weasley isn't it. I have heard many good things about your work in the Ministry of Magic. Perhaps you would consider changing into my department. You would still be able to work with Muggles, we could use someone as hard working as you in our department."

Mr. Weasley looked like he was about to faint with joy. Working in such a high department was a great honour and he would never have dreamed to be offered this position. The pay would also be much better than it was now, and he could finally afford to buy his children their own pets and books.

"I can't...I don't know what to say" By now Mrs. Weasley had also joined the group and was in awe. It never really bothered her that they were so poor, she wanted her husband to be happy and she made sure everyone always felt loved and not like something was missing.

"Why don't you drop by my office at some point? We can discuss further things there." Harry decided that he liked Lord Riddle, but he couldn't understand what was so special about him.

"That is Tom Riddle. He is the hair of Slytherin and has one of the highest positions in the Ministry that there are. He is also the leader of the Death eaters...that is an elite group of witches and wizards, sort of like super powerful Aurors that use a lot of dark magic. They even are allowed to use the unforgivables. The Riddle's are like royalty." Ron whispered when he noticed Harry's confused expression.