Work Text:
Things were finally starting to fall into place.
Albus sat in his office, staring out of the mullioned windows at the summer-clear skies, listening to Hogwarts quiet down around him. Across the grounds, students swarmed into carriages, setting off towards Hogsmeade.
It had taken months of careful planning to get here. First, a suggestion to Cornelius about the merits of international magical co-operation, to plant the idea of reinstating the Triwizard Tournament in his mind. Then letting it slip in the right ears and mouths that he'd hired Alastor Moody as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor - to make him an irresistible target for Tom and to keep the other Aurors away from Hogwarts. He hadn't wanted outsiders investigating any of the suspicious happenings around the tournament.
From there, it had simply been a matter of waiting. Waiting for Tom - and everyone else - to act exactly as they would.
Albus had always been a firm proponent of freedom. One could get so much more out of people if one simply nudged them in the right direction, made the right suggestion at the right time, and then left them to act according to their natures. Tom had never understood this, preferring fear and humiliation and control.
Perhaps Albus should've guided him better.
Perhaps.
Fawkes landed on the armrest. Albus glanced at him and smoothed down the golden-red feathers, glinting in the soporific sunlight.
Thirteen years ago, after he'd learnt of Tom's downfall at the Potters, Albus had bestowed another feather from Fawkes to Ollivander. He'd been reluctant at first to create a new wand - wandmakers hardly ever used the same ingredients from the same magical beast, as they tended to act unpredictably - but in the end, he'd given in. Afterwards, the wand had languished, almost forgotten, in a dark corner of his shop, gathering dust, until Harry Potter had stepped inside. Albus hadn't worried about the wand falling into someone else's hands; he'd known it would only choose someone who carried a fragment of Tom's soul.
It had been a precautionary measure of sorts - to keep the boy from being killed outright when he inevitably came face to face with Tom.
Indeed, the plan had been fraught with things that could've gone wrong, but it had nevertheless worked out better than Albus had hoped. Tom had been resurrected, and he had behaved exactly as expected.
The only unintended consequence, however, had been Cedric. It was a shame - the boy had been rather exemplary for a Hufflepuff. But Albus didn't doubt he could make use of the boy's death somehow.
Fawkes let out a harrowing note in the quiet. Albus kept petting him absentmindedly as the last carriage disappeared behind the hills.
He considered how regrettably predictable humans were.