Work Text:
Riddle ran through his mental checklist of the facts again: Rigel Black was a half-blood, he possessed a hidden or missing aura, he was academically talented with an intense interest in potions, he had unusually high amounts of wild magic, he had a frustratingly unassuming demeanor, he had some connection the Blacks or to the Potters, he had earned Severus’s high regard, and he was weak to his sense of concern for others.
That the real Arcturus Black and the Potter chit knew more than they were admitting to was obvious, though those paths of questioning were currently blocked to him. Rigel’s friends certainly had more depths of information to plumb, but that was taking time, and had to be handled carefully if Riddle wanted to maintain the loyalty of his party member’s children. Severus, he was sure, was also hiding something about the boy, but Riddle’s attempts to root out what exactly it was had been in vain. Severus’s defiance rankled him, but he could not afford to alienate the man, not at present. Severus, beneath his sneering, prickly exterior, had always had a weakness for clever ones with unfortunate blood. Riddle had dared hope that his own efforts, his own ultimatums to the man to force him to leave behind his muggleborn childhood friend, had cleared him of the habit, but it seemed to have found a resurgence in the Rigel Black Child. Very well. He would wait. The ruse had been clever but complicated, with so many conditions and moving parts. Sooner or later, someone would give something away, and the pieces would snap into place like a wampus trap, and Riddle would be there to watch it spring.
He turned his attention to other matters. The whereabouts of his horcrux was an uncomfortable unknown. It had not been sighted since the disastrous ritual, and he cursed his past self for the thousandth time for having let a part of his power exist outside of his control.
He straightened suddenly. Could it be…? No. Severus had always shied away from the truly dark arts, but then again, the desire of someone with his power and talent to avoid such things was unusual, and perhaps there was a stronger motivation for it than Riddle had guessed. Severus was exceptionally skilled in the arts of legilimency and occlumency and the reading of auras. While he had never demonstrated an ability to conceal or alter his own aura, Riddle was sure the ability would be within his grasp. The boy was singularly in awe of Severus, possessing much of his same demeanor. Much of that logic could point to the boy being somehow a son of Severus’s, Riddle considered, and in some ways that would be a simpler explanation, but he could scarcely imagine Severus partaking in the activity that would have been required to enact that possibility, let alone keeping a child suppressed or neglected for years and somehow still maintaining that child’s similarity to and awe of himself. No, the Rigel Black Child could not be Severus’s son. But the alternative…
It would account for the strength and wildness of the boy’s magic, and even his assertions that his magic had a will apart from himself. How had he not made that connection, Riddle cursed himself, even after viewing the boy’s memories? It would account too for the peculiar way in which the boy could infiltrate minds and magical cores, and for how he had managed to triumph against Riddle’s own construct.
But how then had the real Arcturus Black and the Potter girl become involved? Would Severus truly have approached the children of those he hated most, have been able to woo them to his aid by simply appealing to their senses of rebellion against their stifling parents and their desires for alternate education? Or had he unduly influenced them, by compulsion charms or even the imperius curse, and was that at last a sensible explanation for why these two eleven-olds had seemed to risk so much? It was at least an explanation for how they had formulated such a seamless plan, if careful Severus had been the one to design it. Perhaps, Riddle mused, he had even intended for them to be implicated, had intended to take his revenge on Black by setting up his son for scandal, or at least assured himself the consolation prize of his enemy’s shame if his plans went awry.
It explained, too, how they had “happened” to find a candidate that looked so much like them. Severus would have needed only to peruse the continental orphanages for the first urchin with similar features. The urchin would have nothing to lose and would undoubtedly jump at the opportunity of a Hogwarts education, and Severus was too cautious to have told him the full cost until the boy was in too deep to back out.
And then there was Severus's indulgence of the boy, the ensuring that he was removed from the usual potions tract by the time that he would have been caught out, the swiftness with which Severus had deemed the boy worthy of assisting him, worthy of his complete trust. Severus had had no doubts about the boy’s capabilities because he was the reason the boy had them at all.
Riddle wondered at what had driven Severus to such a plan. Severus had never seemed to care much for his legacy beyond his research. But perhaps, Riddle realized, that lack of care was rooted in a knowledge that he had already taken steps to assure his legacy. Perhaps Severus had regretted his action, as Riddle himself did, but had been able to harness the results more effectively. Severus’s passions had always lain more in academia than politics, and perhaps his own course had held true in the ways that Riddle’s ambition had not, and had won himself a powerful ally instead of a dangerous traitor.
Yes. It had to be. The aurors would continue to seek out the body that had been Rigel Black, but Riddle could see now that that was immaterial. The body had probably been already disposed of, its passenger transferred to any number of possible new hosts. The real battle here was not against an uncommonly talented underage wizard, but the half-soul of a mature one, more cunning and secretive than even Riddle had previously thought.
The boy known as Rigel Black had been but a vessel for Severus Snape’s horcrux.