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𝕿om Riddle has always had authority and power over those when he finally found himself. It was his charming looks, his cleverness and cunning characteristics, the way he can manipulate many into doing his will. He's always demanded authority over people, and when he does, those people listen. He's a talented speaker, he knows that, his speeches in his meetings lure those in to what he wants and how he wants to get it. Not to mention if someone didn't do something the way he wanted—they suffer—or die—.
Melody and Regulus were right. He didn't need death eaters, he was capable of winning this war by himself, he was everything that Dumbledore hated about himself because he had those characteristics hidden inside, which those didn't see because he was a Gryffindor brave heart. He was a coward. Placing children on the battlefield because he couldn't face him himself, and usually Tom wouldn't blink an eyelid at this— useless, more bodies in a massacre, it wouldn't bother him.
Until he met Melody Potter.
He loathed the thought of Dumbledore using her for his will, keeping secrets about the prophecies and having her as a pawn in his games. He didn't know why he cared about the girl, but he did. It was strange, he's never cared for someone the way he has for the blonde werewolf, he felt the need to protect her, to keep her safe from other manipulators and cruel people like Dumbledore. She was pure. She was a werewolf, yes, but she was pure to him.
The girl that joked with him the first time he met her and showed no shyness or fear. She just talked normally as she would do any other, like he was a normal person, which before he would hate because he wanted to be powerful, extraordinary. But something about Melody made him feel like he fitted in, the way he never did before, she made him feel as though he was cared for and she saw him as a genuine person and not the devil others see him as— who he was. She saw the other side of him he pushed away years ago in that awful orphanage.
So he protected her as he protected that part of himself, almost like if she got hurt the only lasting pure, innocent part of him would be gone.
Here he was, delivering his usual speech at the table with his death eaters dressed in their dark cloaks and robes, as deranged and wicked as they come. Some still timid and fearful- which he also despised and loved at the same time. Melody didn't stutter, she didn't show weakness, she was just herself all of the time unlike all of these brainwashed fools he calls his loyal supporters.
"And lastly if any of you—" He cut himself off, hearing a pop, a sudden weight on his lap and gasps heard at the table as they blinked down below his face, some drawing their wands as though it was a major threat. He didn't. He simply looked down, finding the one year old boy, a spitting image of his father— but the big chocolatey eyes of hers staring back up at him with long eyelashes, they made his heart warm.
"My Lord what is it?" Bellatrix voiced in her shrill voice as though she was an alien and had never seen a baby before. Tom ignored her, focusing down on the baby, a sense of pride running through his veins as he thought of how the baby had got here without the presence of anyone else. Melody mentioned last time he likes to apparate around the house, it looks like he went quite far this time- and managed to break the Malfoy enchantments that don't let anyone simply in the way he had just appeared.
