Harry potter : Forgotten Lord

Looking around the empty chamber, he couldn't help but silently curse at his own misfortune and ridiculously bad timing. Both the Philosopher's Stone and the Mirror of Erised had been stolen right out from under his most vigilant watch, and now all of his plans were forced to change to take into account this latest setback.

In hindsight it was his own fault for leaving the stone in the care of others, whilst he was out of the country on important international business. Now that he thought about it, it would have been far safer just to carry the damn stone on his person in one of his many pockets lining his vibrant and colourful robes, since no thief would have dared try to pickpocket him.

Shaking his head once again at his own stupidity, he silently examined the empty chamber once again, looking for any possible leads that he could use to identify and locate the thief and thereby solve all of his current problems, and then promptly ask them how they did it.

But nothing turned up; lady luck was just not on his side today it appeared. Originally, his plans involved using the Mirror of Erised supported by a series of ward schemes designed to leach away at Tom's magical energies. This would result in returning the Dark Lord to being nothing more than a whisper, an echo of his former self, thus allowing for him to be captured by several complex and highly specialized ward schemes meant for spirits and other phantasms.

Tom could then be examined, studied, and questioned until they learned exactly how Tom had managed to cheat death all those years ago on that fateful Halloween. If, somehow, Tom regained his strength and power in his confinement and a successful escape became possible, they could simply reactivate the wards and drain him of his strength until he was once again nothing more than a whisper... it would simply be a matter of repetition after that.

Once they learned his chosen method of immortality they could remove or counter whatever abomination of magic Tom had woven. After all, there were dozens of different rituals and measures that one could use to keep from dying. It always came down to personal choice and what one was willing to ultimately sacrifice to prolong one's life and stymie time itself.

The Philosopher's Stone itself actually offered continuous life, but it had to be drunk monthly and came at the price of having any further children, something Nicholas and Penelope found out the hard way after they first started taking the life giving liquid. That was one of their most major regrets in their long lives, he knew, the inability to have a child of their own, whilst fearing that any child that they might adopt would eventually betray them for the stone... like several of their friends had done over their astoundingly long lives.

Even when taken monthly, it only brought good health and a youthful body, not actual protection from any physical harm or death itself, just protection from the ravages of time. If failed to be taken every 28 days, the individual would suffer the effects of all the time they'd been taking the elixir, compressed into a few hours. It also offered the prospect of unlimited wealth in the form of gold, which made it even more attractive and useful to would be thieves, something that most people would desire, much less a Dark Lord. In other words, it was the ideal bait.

If Tom somehow managed to escape capture, he would have to spend another half a decade regaining his magical strength before he would have the strength necessary to once again take another human host without the outside assistance of one of his remaining faithful followers. But he doubted Tom would risk contacting his own followers, just in case they betrayed him in an attempt to seize power for themselves from the weakened dark lord.

He seriously doubted Lucius, for example, would help his fallen master in his current condition; since Tom's unexpected fall Lucius had only gained more power, to the point that he had replaced his master, yet kept a respectable image. If anything, Lucius would discreetly seek a means to remove Tom from the world permanently, just like any respectable dark wizard rival would, since Lucius would never be able take on his master directly and at full power.

This quite reasonable fear of betrayal would give the light more time to prepare; it was natural for ones who used betrayal as a weapon to fear it being used against them as well. Tom was no exception to this... and neither of them would be willing to share power.

Naturally, betrayals could happen to anyone, he had suffered from several betrayals himself over the course of his long life, some personal, and even more political. Unfortunately, he could not claim innocence in that matter either.

If he was right, like he normally was, then Tom wouldn't risk contacting any of his Death Eaters for help, just in case one of them decided to take advantage of his weakened state and betray him. Plus, Tom was a natural loner, preferring to rely only on himself for everything, and would only involve another as a last resort, once again confirming his belief that Tom wouldn't contact his followers in his current condition.

This fortunately gave him more time to prepare and train young Neville for their inevitable battle. The trap also had the secondary purpose of testing young Neville and the prophecy itself by forcing an early confrontation, via helping to subtly direct both Voldemort and Neville onto a collision course with one another. This had the benefit of directing the prophecy on the course he desired, under strictly controlled circumstances, rather than being left to chance.

He had originally planned to use the cloak of invisibility, that he had borrowed from the Potters, to follow behind Neville to monitor the meeting and to intervene if necessary. Unfortunately, he had to give the highly magical cloak back prematurely; he was actually hoping to hold on to the heirloom permanently if he could get away with it, but the goblins had stopped him.

It wasn't the first time one of his carefully engineered plans had been ruined by the untimely intervention or interference of those crafty goblins, nor did he doubt it would be the last. At least now he had a spy within their ranks, even if the spy was still rather lowly placed for information gathering of any significant value; hopefully they would prove to be a good long-term investment that would pay handsomely in time. His spy would slowly work their way up the ranks and ever closer to more valuable and useful information.

So now he was forced to place a fake stone under numerous heavy wards. The stone was cleverly charmed to leach away at the next person who tried to handle it, just like the mirror had been intended to do, before it had been stolen. This alternative method was certainly less effective than the Mirror of Erised, but with the rest of the wards supporting it, they would work to undermine Tom's magical energy and dampen his magical ability. The stone was also permanently enchanted so that it couldn't leave the room, trapping his target without a means of escape, whilst the wards ate away at his strength.

Of course, this time, he put an additional trap hidden within the stone's makeup itself; any supposed 'elixir' made from this stone would be highly poisonous and destructive. In addition he made sure that all the rune clusters were reinforced and were otherwise invisible to the naked eye, as well as undetectable by all but the most powerful and specialized detection charms. Even a cursebreaker of uncommon skill and experience would be hard pressed to find these runes.

In short, he had corrected his mistakes and vastly improved his original plan, while also adding additional layers of wards over the whole trap.

He also gave a series of strict orders to the portraits in his office, specifically that at least one of them had to be present in their office frames at all times of the day, until he said otherwise. Now he had at least one pair of eyes on his monitors at all times, watching them carefully for any disturbance or sign of intrusion.

He soon had a meeting with Ron Weasley to get to; he had to teach the boy some new chess moves whilst receiving Ron's Christmas report on Neville's recent activities.

He just hoped that by the end of Ron's report that he had some lemon drops left! It seemed that young Ron was taken with the delicious confection as much as he was and that was saying something. He made a mental note to order the house elves to restock his already considerable supply; he had a feeling that by the end of the next meeting he would be running dangerously low again.

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