Chapter Text
Tom stared at Theia as she jumped from puddle to puddle, fascinated as always by just how very much his daughter resembled him. From the cowlick ruffling her dark hair to the dimple in her left cheek, she was his. Truly, the only thing she had gotten from her mother were her eyes—bright emerald gems set in a cherubic face.
Tom had originally decided to have a child as a kind of experiment to see just how powerful of an heir he could create. It was unfortunate that the most powerful witch of child-bearing age at the time was a mudblood, but it ended up suiting his purposes.
Tom had seduced Lily Potter, playing on her loneliness as her young husband focussed his energy on his work with the auror force. He had seduced her, and nearly ten months later when Lily was heavy with his child, Tom had abducted her, ripped her magical core from her body and fused it with the core of his newborn daughter. A life for life sacrifice to create a witch with unmatched potential.
Theia giggled as she hopped in an especially large puddle, causing water to splash everywhere. "Daddy, look!" she smiled wide, spreading her small arms to the sky. Thunder rumbled overhead, and a dark cloud gathered 20 feet above their heads, releasing a downpour over the two magicals. The little girl shrieked with more laugher, twirling in her rain. "Now you’re wet too!"
Tom stood completely drenched but smiling widely nonetheless. "You have the power of the storm, child. You’ll be calling down lightning before long."
Theia stared up at him with large green eyes, completely enthralled with the idea. "Lightning?" she breathed. "I could really do that?"
"Of course," Tom tilted Theia’s face up with a gentle finger under her chin. "I am the Dark Lord, the most powerful practitioner of the dark arts to have ever lived, and you are my daughter. You shall be the greatest elemental witch this world has ever seen."
"What does elametsle mean?"
"Elemental, not elametsle."
"Yes, that! What does that mean?"
The Dark Lord pulled out his wand and summoned four spheres of water, fire, earth, and air to hover in front of Theia. "The elements are what make up the world around you. They are the pieces that make up the trees and the lakes and the dirt, you understand?" When Theia nodded, Tom continued, "Witches and wizards sometimes have a connection to some of these pieces. Usually this just means that they are better with certain spells, like a person who is better at fire or water based spells, but sometimes, a witch or wizard is born who can harness nature in all her glory. These special magicals are called elementals."
"Like how I can make it rain?"
"Yes, dearest. That’s exactly right. You were able to make these small clouds, and they rained on us, because you are an elemental."
"Are you one too?"
Tom shook his head no. "I can mimic the gift to a certain extent, but being an elemental is something you are born with."
"So you can’t make it rain?"
"A true storm? No, not without a very hard ritual."
"Oh. How’re you going to teach me to make lightning then?"
Tom laughed. "You will learn, don’t worry. Now let’s go back inside. It’s nearly lunchtime, and I have a meeting this afternoon."
The little girl pouted but took her father’s hand and walked away from the beautiful storm.
§§§§§
Theia let a small bolt of lightning fly from her hand, shouting in triumph as it hit the boulder dead center and caused the large rock to explode into a hundred sharp pieces.
"Very good, dearest," Tom smiled proudly from his spot behind her. Only 9 years old and she was already capable of controlling such powerful wandless magic.
Theia turned to look at him with a wide grin. "Hey dad, do you think the lightning scar on my forehead is because I’m an elemental? Like magic marked me so you would know I’m special?"
Tom stared at his young daughter for a long minute, trying to decide how best to answer her. He could hardly inform his 9-year-old little girl that he’d murdered her mother as Theia was being born and that the scar was a mark left behind by the ritual that had augmented Theia with the strength and protection of Lily Potter’s magic. Theia was far too young for such a vicious truth. But still, outright lying would breed nothing but trouble in the future. It was somewhat amazing he had managed to go so long on such weak platitudes as 'your mother is in a better place.'
Finally, Tom settled on a more child-friendly version of the truth. "That mark is a sign of your mother’s sacrifice and love for you," he said, which wasn’t really a lie even if it did leave out his gruesome role in the whole thing. After all, the ritual would not have worked without Lily Potter’s unconditional and selfless love for her child. "That scar is the visible sign that her magic runs through your veins, strengthening and protecting you. It is the greatest shield that I could devise to keep you safe from harm."
"Is…is that why mom’s gone now? Did she d-die to give me this?" Theia’s voice only shook slightly as she asked her question, running her trembling fingers over the jagged scar.
Clever, clever girl. "Yes, child," Tom confirmed with a gentle voice. "Her strength is yours now, to shield you and guard you always."
Theia stared up at him with glittering emerald eyes. "She’s dead…because of me? I killed my own mother?"
Tom was quick to pull the distraught girl into his arms, though he did wish this conversation could have been delayed. "No Theia, no. You didn’t kill you mother." The 'I did' went unsaid. "This isn’t something to be sad and cry about dearest. Your scar should be a mark of pride. You should wear it like a badge of honor, that your mother’s beautiful sacrifice will never be forgotten."
"But you’ve never thought self-sacrifice is a good thing before," Theia protested.
Tom sighed, "You’re right. I usually take a dim view of martyrs. You certainly should never consider anything worth sacrificing your life for. But that is because you are exceptional, and no matter how much good could come from such a sacrifice on your part, it could never compare to the harm the world would suffer in losing you.
"The others that I mock for such foolish sacrifices are just that: fools. Their sacrifices are worthless because they achieve nothing in giving up their lives.
"Your mother, on the other hand, she is an exception. Her death was the most worthy thing she could ever have given to the world. She was a strong and kind woman, but in living she would have made no real impact on society. By dying she gifted the world with something so much greater than herself. You. You, protected and powerful enough to help me build an empire that will usher in a golden age the likes of which the magical community has never seen before. For giving the world you, your mother should be revered, not mourned."
"Are we going to make a holiday for her then? When you’re king?" Theia asked, wiping away her tears and standing taller.
"Of course we shall," Tom conceded easily, like it had already been his plan. "Her birthday was January 30th, so we will name that day the Sacrificial Feast Day, and everyone will decorate with lily flowers and lightning, to honor your mother."
"To honor my mother," Theia nodded, determination lighting her youthful face.
§§§§§
Theia stared at her Hogwarts acceptance letter morosely. "§Dad won’t let me go§," she complained to Nagini. The snake was stretched out along the sun-warmed rocks of the seaside cliff that marked the edge of their property. "§He says its too dangerous for me right now. That Dumbledore will know who I am as soon as my name is called for the sorting, and they would try to take me away.§"
Nagini lifted her large head to blink lazily at the 11-year-old. "§Why would you want to leave master’s home for this school? You always say master is the only one smart and powerful enough to teach you§."
"§Well yes, but surely if Hogwarts was good enough for dad, I would still learn lots§."
"§But why would you want to learn from a weaker hunter? Master teaches you to strike with lightning. The other humans could not do that§."
"§No, you’re right. Hogwarts couldn’t teach me all that dad can. It’s just…everybody else, Draco and Theo and Daphne and Blaise, they all get to go even though everyone knows their parents work for my dad. They’re all going to have a great time, and I’m going to be stuck here all alone§."
"§Good hunters are patient, hatchling. You must wait until you are strong enough§." With that, Nagini relaxed back onto the rock, clearly considering the conversation finished. Theia rolled her eyes, but she didn’t try to speak to the great snake further.
She knew Nagini was right, and really, having normal lessons after getting to experience learning at her father’s knee would just end up being a frustrating letdown, but Theia couldn’t help but wish sometimes that she was normal. Not the daughter of the Dark Lord Voldemort and future princess of the entire wizarding world, feared by all and sundry with a giant target painted on her forehead. If she was just Theia, daughter of Tom Riddle, she could go to Hogwarts with her friends in September.
§§§§§
"Theia! You’ll never guess what my father just told me!" Draco burst into the Riddle Manor library and came up short at the site before him.
Theia was curled up with Nagini poking at the stump that was her regrowing arm. While this was not an entirely uncommon circumstance for the young heiress (her father may have been careful not to permanently maim his daughter during dueling practice, but that didn’t mean she would escape unscathed, and regenerating severed limbs was nothing to the Dark Lord), Draco had never seen her quite this badly injured.
"Merlin! What happened to you?"
"Dueling practice," Theia grimaced.
"What moronic Death Eater was stupid enough to blast your bloody arm off?" Draco asked incredulously. Salazar, the Dark Lord was going to murder the idiot.
"My father," Theia arched her left eyebrow.
Draco paled so fast he actually felt dizzy as he realized who he had just insulted, and Theia couldn’t help smirking at his expression. "I-I’ve just never seen you so hurt before. Does he…Do your practices usually get so v-violent?"
Theia shrugged the shoulder that still had an arm attached to it. "Better to build an instinctual urge to dodge certain spells in an environment where your opponent doesn’t mean you any harm than in an actual battle," she quoted her father. "Anyways, what did you come running in here to tell me?"
Draco brightened at the reminder and he practically preened as he told her about the reinstatement of the Triwizard Tournament which would be held at Hogwarts this year, sure he was the first to tell the Dark Princess the news.
While Theia found this gossip interesting, she couldn’t match Draco’s clear excitement. For the past three years, she had watched her friends head off to school while she remained safely ensconced at the Dark Sect’s headquarters, and she had no doubt her circumstances wouldn’t be changing this September. "Are you going to enter your name to become Hogwarts’ champion?"
Draco’s face fell slightly. "They’re making some new rule this year: no one under 17 can enter their name. Trying to make it less likely someone will die, I suppose. But it’s still going to be awesome to watch," he insisted. "And it’s open to the public, so maybe your father will let you come. Maybe under a glamour or something."
"Surely the security won’t be so pathetic that someone could get through wearing a glamour," Theia sneered. Even powerful glamours should be detectable by a halfway decent warding scheme.
"Well," Draco floundered to come up with some way to get his princess and friend into the entertainment event of the century. Unlike Theia, whose father had pushed her well beyond the Hogwarts curriculum by this point, Draco only had the most rudimentary understanding of wards and security in general, so while he may have been towards the top of his class at Hogwarts, he had no idea how to address this problem.
"It will have to be polyjuice," Theia continued to Draco’s secret relief. "The only wards that can detect it require a human sacrifice to erect, so I doubt Hogwarts is equipped with them."
"I’m guessing no one can get in here with polyjuice?"
"Of course not. Every year on Imbolc father uses the useless prisoners from the dungeons to strengthen the wards," Theia informed Draco with careful flippancy.
"Have you…ever helped with the ritual?" Draco looked a little green at the prospect.
Theia’s face blanked for a second, before she straightened her spine and lifted her chin haughtily. "Dad let me do all the setup for the ritual this year, and I stayed to observe everything." Theia had found the magic that night fascinating, and she hadn’t felt bad about the people they sacrificed, not really. They were just prisoners after all. Enemies. But still, it had been the first time her dad hadn’t sent her away before he finished a captive off—the first time she had actually seen her father kill someone.
Draco cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Yes, well, Hogwarts definitely doesn’t do that, so if you use polyjuice maybe the Dark Lord will let you attend the tasks? And maybe he would even let you go to the Yule Ball over winter break. You could come as my date, if you want."
"Are you asking me out Draco?" Theia smirked to cover up her nerves, though she was truly amused by the idea.
"No!" Draco blurted, before quickly backtracking when Theia jerked back slightly. "I mean yes. Well, no? But, yes? You know, just, if you wanted to go, you could."
Theia didn’t know if she had ever seen the Malfoy heir so off-kilter, and she broke in before her friend could dig himself an even bigger hole, "I’ll have to talk to my father about it. But, Draco? Thank you. I’d really like the chance to see Hogwarts and meet people outside the Death Eaters."
§§§§§
A week after Draco’s announcement of the Triwizard Tournament, Theia was having tea with her father in his office, trying to convince him to allow her to attend the tasks and the Yule Ball using polyjuice.
Tom took a sip of his tea, looking contemplative, and Theia felt her hope swell when her proposal wasn’t immediately rejected. "This could work," he muttered, and focussed back on his daughter, watching her intently. "Theia, would you like to attend Hogwarts this year?"
"What?" she breathed. "For the entire year?"
"Yes, for your entire fourth year."
"I…You know I’ve always wanted to experience Hogwarts," she said hesitantly. "But why? Why now?"
"I received some new intelligence yesterday," the Dark Lord answered. "With the distraction of the Triwizard Tournament, Dumbledore thinks to hide Flamel’s Philosopher’s Stone within Hogwarts. I have been thinking on the best way to go about stealing it, and I think your training has progressed far enough to give the task to you. Dumbledore cannot put any truly life-threatening wards up to guard the stone, not in a school full of curious children, so this should be a relatively safe first solo mission for you."
"You mean it? Truly?" Theia asked, possibly even more excited at the prospect of a solo mission than she was over getting to go to Hogwarts for a year.
"Yes," Tom smiled indulgently. "This way you will have an entire year to figure out the best way around the protections."
Theia barely resisted throwing her arms around her father in an enthusiastic hug, but her beaming expression conveyed her happiness just as effectively. "So I will spend the year polyjuiced?"
"Yes," Tom nodded. "I will have to find a suitable muggle for you to take in an expanded trunk. You will have to make sure you don’t forget to feed it, and I’ll send you your supply of polyjuice through your vanishing letter box." Theia’s vanishing letter box was a rather brilliant adaptation by her father of vanishing cabinets, and it would allow him to circumvent Hogwarts’ wards to securely send her any small item she might need throughout the year.
As for the muggle teenager Theia would be holding captive in her trunk during the year, she knew better than to ask whether they couldn’t just put the thing to sleep. Any magical influence on the original would be transferred through the polyjuice, so the draught of living death was definitely out. She’d have to guard against suicide attempts as well, as the magical backlash Theia would suffer if the muggle died while Theia was polyjuiced would be incredibly dangerous.
Shaking off these morbid musings, the raven-haired teenager focussed on a more immediate concern, "Do you have any ideas for my cover identity?" Outside of the actual theft, this was the most daunting aspect of Theia’s new mission.
"It would be easier to respond naturally to your real name, but unfortunately for this purpose, I made both your names too unique. Theia Aella Riddle. I didn’t think about undercover work when I chose that," Tom admitted, though he didn’t really regret it. His Theia was in no way common, and she deserved to bear a moniker as exceptional as she was.
"Ila is pretty close to Aella," Theia commented. "I don’t think I would have trouble answering to it. And what about that prisoner’s last name? Rizzo? It’s pretty close to Riddle without being too obvious."
"Ila Rizzo. Yes, that will do nicely," Tom assented. "Now we just have to build the rest of your alias," he quirked a wry smile. For the next several hours, they lobbed ideas at one another, eventually settling on her identity as the half-blooded only child of Tommaso and Eva Rizzo, two Italian curse-breakers who had homeschooled her while they traveled the world raiding magical tombs in search of treasure. Her parents had decided she should do some of her schooling surrounded by other children, but being the adrenaline junkies they were, they didn’t want her to miss out on the excitement of the Triwizard Tournament, so they chose to send her to Hogwarts.
Finally, Theia posed the question that had been burning in the back of her mind all day, "Why do you really want the Philosopher’s Stone, dad? It can’t be for immortality. You already have horcruxes."
"Can you not discern the reason?" Tom pushed her to think.
"Well, it would have to be for the gold, right?" she posed, continuing when Tom motioned for her to elaborate. "Right now we only have so much money backing our revolution. If we have the stone, we won’t ever have to worry about financing."
"Very good," Tom responded, pleased. "Outside of using it as a red herring to explain away our immortality in the future, you are correct that the longevity granted by the stone is irrelevant to the two of us. You will make your own horcrux when you turn 17, and I am working on some additional safeguards for us both. No, I want the stone for its ability to generate gold. I am close to owning Britain through a political coup, but we will need more gold when we turn our attention towards conquering Europe. It will be a long war, and such campaigns need funds."
Theia met her father’s eyes seriously. "I won’t disappoint you dad."
"I know," Tom reached out to squeeze her shoulder gently. "You always do me proud."