The Just

The problem with the most notorious forms of tyranny was that they were wholly dependent on a scapegoat. Scapegoats created a rally point for a specific tyrant to gather his base of loyal followers and more often than not, the fact that these tyrants could not possibly care less about the issue was fully ignored.

Take Hitler's Aryan race, for example. Those who were of pure German ancestry (few and far between) readily rallied around the idea that they were superior. They also readily ignored the fact that the main proponent of this ideal was clearly not part of that background. But still, he was a strong, charismatic leader who pushed the scapegoating as far as it could possibly go.

Where else did this occur?

Ah, yes. The concurrent regime of one, Gellert Grindelwald. He, however, found it prudent not only to use Hitler's agenda to suit his own, but managed to involve his own people against muggles. His entire spiel was to gather support and under his leadership to exterminate muggles. It helped that what the muggles were doing to each other further led to the Wizarding notion that muggles were either woefully ignorant of their actions or completely barbaric. Either way, Grindelwald was able to accumulate an impressive following.

Of course there were many others. The Holy Inquisition, for example, followed shortly by the Spanish Inquisition. There were wars of extermination in Australia, New Zealand, the whole of the Americas, Africa, Asia, Russia, France – absolutely no country was spared from this event and yet none of those who started the massacres survived. Not a single one reached their goal of total domination. Not a single one in future history books would be remembered kindly. Grindelwald and Hilter would meet a similar end.

So, where did they all go wrong?

The answer was glaringly obvious. They relied on a support base who were not the majority and who feared losing political clout and, without fail, did. Therefore, scapegoats were, in the long run, ineffective.

A different strategy would have to be used to garner support and favor. Perhaps even the combination of several strategies. Money, prestige, and prowess had ensured the success of many men both magical and non-magical throughout history. These were the men who history and time favored. These were the men whose reputations were immortal.

And I will be among those numbers, the young man thought as he leaned back in his seat and gazed around Hogwarts's library. Already, he was alone and as he looked out a latticed window, he understood why. There was, at most, a half hour before curfew began. This did not bother him in the slightest. After all, his rounds as prefect allowed him out past curfew.

The prefect looked down at his completed Transfiguration homework in distaste. He'd always disliked the subject and he wondered just how much of that was due to its professor. Professor Albus Dumbledore did not give the young man the chance to shine as he did in every other subject. Nor did the professor accept any of his actions or words at face value. He supposed this had to do with the situation he'd originally found the young man in. But honestly, that was a completely different environment, and a completely different child.

Six years had done away with not only the young man's childish need to steal and stash goods belonging to other children who had nothing, but also his constant need to hide or else inflict pain. Here, he was not bullied (at least, not anymore) and here he had plenty of his own. He'd made a name for himself already and steadily received the rewards for it.

Albus Dumbledore saw it fit to ignore any progress he made, though. Most likely, he suspected what the young man was planning. Or even more likely, suspected that it was going to be much worse. But the young man was not foolish. He watched with increasing interest as both magical and non-magical Europe was plunged into war. He read papers from both sides and realized that their scapegoat tactics were used not only to start the war but to fight against the propagators. The young man was learning from their mistakes and his resolve not to fall into the same pattern was only strengthened when research proved that this was a common occurrence.

The young man furled his essay and placed it into his open bag quickly followed by his school books. He then closed the bag, stood, and replaced the books into their appropriate slots on the shelves still thinking about the ways in which his new plans would play out. Luckily, it was not difficult to put his current plots to rest. No, those would not have served him well, simply put him onto the same path as those before him.

He grabbed his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and pushed in his chair before heading out the library. The young man would have to rethink his entire strategy and wondered, briefly, how much of a difference there really was between those who could wield wands and those who could not. Obviously, the same pattern applied to wizards as well as to muggles. They were not immune to the same flaws, meaning that perhaps there were benefited by some of the same positive qualities as wizards.

He scoffed as he uttered the password to the Slytherin common rooms and climbed in. As if.



Albus Dumbledore stared at the destruction that was once the home of one, Tom Marvolo Riddle. It had been a rather impressive home. Only three stories but half a block long and nearly as wide. The entrance hall had no wall but a large, shining window through which visitors could see the elegant center stairway leading to the second floor. Now that glass lay shattered and crunching under the solid soles of Dumbledore's rather expensive dragon-hide boots.

The man, now far too old to be doing this sort of thing, carefully picked his way through what was left of the house and attempted to scale the staircase. Under normal circumstances he would not have bothered but at this point he was unable to do anything else. He simply had to visually confirm what his ears had no trouble discerning in the heavy silence that one could only hear in the aftermath of death and devastation.

He wondered if he would have carried out this particular mission had he suspected something like this could happen. However, in all his years studying Tom Riddle, he knew this situation to be more than improbable. It was completely and utterly impossible.

And yet, how else could he explain the screams of at least two children, a woman, the wailing of an infant, and the terrified squeaks of house elves? Had he made a mistake in selecting this estate as being the property of Riddle? No, Dumbledore had watched Riddle carefully. There was no mistaking that this was his home and besides, Dumbledore did not make such simple and damaging mistakes as that. But how had he missed the family?

Should it not have been simple to see children running about the manor or perhaps throwing themselves into their father's arms after a long day of work? But perhaps they knew better and he had a family only for appearance's sake. No, Dumbledore had reassured himself, there was no love here. That was the impossibility, not having a family. To top it off, the innocent family had all gotten out safely and would not be separated.

That hope though evaporated when he realized that (though he had distinctly heard the crack of someone Disapparating) after the absence of extra chattering from the house elves, and the ensuing silence after the Fiend's Fyre dissipated, he still could hear wailing. It was this crying, the crying of an innocent, defying all odds, still alive that sent him scaling through the rubble.

He had thought that perhaps the infant was trapped underneath the rubble but had not been seriously injured, and maybe, its position had spared it from the fire. But the reality was to see a fairly large box in the back of what would have once been the second floor, surrounded by debris which sometimes fell from the third floor. He made quick work of moving this to the side and was surprised to see that though charred, the wall itself was intact.

Dumbledore hesitated as he realized that the door knob had been melted off and was now a cooling puddle on the floor. After a quick Alohomora, his suspicion was confirmed. The locks bolting the door in place had melted and cooled making his entrance impossible. But impossible was starting to look less and less, well, impossible.

After all, the room was protected by nothing short of wards which made it impenetrable for the Fiend's Fyre to enter while every other room was decimated. A father who did not love their child would not have bothered to expend the time and energy it would have taken to construct a ward this powerful and only one wizard still living besides him could have.

The old man pushed aside his doubts and waved his wand. The spell disappeared into the wards but did no damage to the simple wooden door. However, the infant had now stopped crying and there was soft coo of pleasure (or was it wonder?) from within. Had the wards really? He did performed the spell again and this time there was gurgle from the infant. The wards had. Perhaps using the energy from his spells it had made some form of entertainment for the infant. That would explain why he nor the family had not heard crying until the fire ceased.

Simple, strange, and effective. Most attackers would not have bothered to stick around to see that their attack was successful. In that case, the wards would have ensured that the infant was not heard and would afterwards alert its father the child was still safe, though unhappy, within the room. Perhaps he could suggest something of the sort to the Potters and Longbottoms.

But first, how to get the baby safely out of this room? No sooner had he thought this than the door disintegrated giving him the first view of the nursery. Pale blue walls, a white rocking chair facing a set of French windows (safely latched), clothes folded clumsily on a changing table, and in the center a cradle containing a baby sitting up with a floppy blue rabbit safely hugged to her yellow pajamas and chewing on her right fist.

He walked over to the baby and stared down into the cradle for a moment as she looked back at him with innocently curious, hazel eyes. Dumbledore decided, that before he picked her up (not knowing what would happen if he did), he would try to find out some basic information about her and moved to the drawers under the changing table. Diapers, pacifiers, clothing, bottles... Dumbledore placed all of this in a bag he transfigured from the changing table pillow and continued his search. After throwing in several toys and a few blankets as well, he found what he was looking for.

It was a children's book with some fairly important information written on the inside front cover. This Book Belongs To: Caelestis Malon Riddle. Pleased, but not satisfied, Dumbledore added this to the bag and continued on to find a baptismal book. Needless to say this stunned Dumbledore. Tom Riddle, religious? He concluded that it was perhaps the child's mother who insisted on the ceremony before finding that the child was born on 30 May, 1981 making her just over six months old. He closed this and placed it into the bag before standing up from his kneeling position with a soft groan.

He had to admit, he was getting much too old for this. After a brief stretch, a strong sense of urgency took over and he quickly moved to the cradle gathering both Caelestis Riddle (still covered in a soft blanket) and her blue bunny into his arms before hurrying out the room. As soon as he stepped out with the baby in his arms, the room collapsed and he Apparated away still very much impressed by the ward's intricacies.



An hour later found Tom Riddle standing in the very same spot from which Albus Dumbledore had Disapparated. The scene was no longer deathly silent but calls and yelps sounded as the various wizards milled about, occasionally slipping over the remains of his home. Normally, seeing this amount of destruction would have had him snarling and snapping orders. But he felt no inclination to do anything but stand there gazing down at where his daughter's nursery should have been.

A hand landed on his shoulder, gently squeezing it.

"Tom, come. There's nothing we can do here," a woman said.

If there were anything that Tom Riddle dreaded hearing, that was it. That there was absolutely nothing he could do to solve this problem.

"Come," the woman repeated. "The children are waiting."

Tom Riddle bit back a whimper as he answered her, "Not all of them. I'm not leaving until I know – "

"Until you know what?" the woman snapped. "Nothing you learn here will help bring her back!"

"I have to know if the wards – if they failed."

The woman removed her hand from his shoulder and he used this opportunity to shake off his own inactivity and with more strength than he knew he possessed dug, pulled, pried, and pushed the rubble away from room for the first time in years, forgetting that he owned a wand. The woman sighed and called over her shoulder, "Come help us move this mess!" before she too began excavating the room.

Within minutes every wand was helping in the task and several minutes later the smashed cradle was revealed.

The sight drew a gasp from the woman and a sob from Tom Riddle because the cradle was, most blessedly, empty.