Harry Potter : Chapter 87: Means to an End II

"To understand." the deceptively simple answer led the Slytherin Prefect to tilt his head sideways, "And more importantly, given what I've seen, to try and make you understand."

"I understand perfectly..."

...

For once not patient enough to play the long, twisting game of words until what he needed was the only option left fot the one he was talking with, Riddle huffed, annoyance clearly written on his face.

"For all of your indignation now, you didn't spend a single thought about the condition of werewolves everywhere until you tangentially became involved, and only because Rubeus saw fit to ask for our assistance."

"How can you condone what he has done!?" the gree-eyed witch suddenly rose to her feet, the memory of what the two had witnessed together unspoken but clear in the air: "How can..."

"How can you not admire him?" Riddle's question managed to be delivered in the exact tone of earnest curiosity needed to cut the wind from her sails: "How can you not appreciate Rubeus' determination in seeing not only the results of his studies, but results that carry an undeniable, tangible, positive wight in the world?"

He left his words hang in the air for a few seconds, waiting just long enough for Minerva to begin to choose some words before continuing: "Oh, yes, hypocrisy ... I can honestly say that wouldn't have expected it from you."

"Hypocrisy!" the fir and dragon heartstring wand in her hand sent a glimmer of angry sparks over the aged desk of the Library, "how dare..."

"Do you have ways to ignore how extraordinary Marie's situation is?" honest perplexity replaced the aggressive overtones that his posture had held until that moment, "I'd like to hear those..."

"The magic he used, Tom..." Minerva shook her head with irritation clear on her face once she realized taht she couldn't truly bring herself to piss on the impossible that Rubeus had managed to achieve once again: "He reanimated a deer's corpse for Merlin's sake!"

"And with it, he realized what may very well be the less destructive use of those kinds of magic ever recorded." Riddle crossed his legs and rested his clasped hands on one knee, not for a moment feeling threatened by Minerva's holding of her wand while she was admittedly enraged. Enraged for what? For the use of magics that others deemed 'evil', how petty.

"You condone..."

"It was a mean to an end, Minerva." Tom sighed, openly displaying disappointment now that he had gotten Minerva to admit that she wasn't really questioning the results, only the effects that the means used could have on her friends and herself. "He did what he could, with what he had."

"And the results speak for themselves!"

"Quite." the Slytherin wizard nodded readily, "But not, I think, in the way you mean it: before that dawn the last week, there has never been a single successful attempt to interfere in any concrete way with the werewolf transformation."

Minerva sighed as she slid her wand into her sleeve only to pinch the bridge of her nose while he closed her eyes in exasperation. After several seconds, she turned towards the wizard she had been speaking with, a stark, primal resolution clear in her eyes.

"I gave Rubeus until the next full moon to solve the problem. Then I'll go to Professor Dumbledore with this."

Tom's gaze turned somewhat flat for a second, gone too fast for Minerva to truly register it, but her wand was ready in her hand, a nervous twitch of her wrist enough to slide it in her fingers.

"Why would you do something so asinine?" the question was delivered simply, clearly, and with no ambiguity.

Then again, it wasn't really a question: Riddle was feeling an unfamiliar irritation in the name of someone that wasn't himself turn quickly into a sort of simmering rage. 

Not that much because of Marie's or even Rueus' future, of course not, but because of the possible consequence of Minerva tattling to Dumbledore.

"Rushing this kind of research can be disastrous, Minerva, you can imagine that much, even if you don't care enough about Marie to worry about...

Minerva's expression was quickly growing stormy under the accusations and disdain that Tom was showing her: "It's exactly because I care about her future that I..."

"How many full moons did you set putting your life at risk to discover a cure you don't need for yourself?" Riddle's question cut her reply short while his dark eyes seemed to pin her in place, knowing that his use of mere logic to force her to face the truth of the matter at hand was having the intended result.

"This has nothing to do with..."

"How many hours, days, and months have you taken away from your own interests, your own ambitions?" Tom was still seated in his own enchanted armchair, hands calmly clasped over one knee, and he was calm regarding the witch in front of him, even if his tone had become stark and unforgiving.

"Do you think Rubeus wished harm on that poor..."

"I know that he hardly meant the current result!" Minerva snapped back, her wand once again hidden in her sleeve before she crossed her arms, "But that's hardly the point!"

"Of course." once more, Tom easily used her reaction to keep the tempo of the conversation going as he wished, not quite twisting her words, but deepening their significance to the point that she was forced to listen: "The point is that you refuse to see the truth of the matter at hand."

"Ignoring the not so easily discounted fact that Marie herself might be the element to determine the failure of rubeus' procedure," Riddle bagan.

"our unconventional friend took the first and clearly most important step in the direction that might see lycanthropy as a whole turn from a sentence to live as a reviled member of society, regarded as more beast than a person, untrusted because of something beyond your control, into a condition that might be treated, if not outright cured."

Pursing his lips in a manner not dissimilar from Minerva's own unconscious tick, he kept talking: "Bringing the question to Professor Dumbledore is only going to slow down Rubeus' progress, nevermind the fact that he might be expelled with his wand snapped since he hasn't sat through his O.W.L.s just yet."

"More importantly," Riddle said while uncrossing his legs and rising to his feet.

"even with this 'disaster' that struck a person you have no connection with, even with Rubeus' immediate decision to bring ourselves fully in his confidence, to the point where he's going to find us a Pensieve to use, you refuse to recognize that this event is probably going to be pivotal into changing the fate of countless others. 

I assure you, there are many werewolves in the world, that have suffered and will suffer for their whole lives, and an insanely large percentage of those would be willing to offer themselves for any chance, no matter how slim, to be cured."

"So I should just ignore what he has done?"

"Rubeus' mistake, if we can call it that," a twirl of his yew and phoenix feather wand turned once more his armchair into a drawing into his leatherbound book.

"was to presume that the Marie had a strong enough sense of self to pass her trial unscathed, and enough bravery to not deem a life as a relatively mindless magic wolf the better alternative to an existence without magic in it."

Minerva, for all of her brilliance, was slowly going out of words to use: "She can't possibly have chosen..."

"We don't know, and we can't know for sure, can we?" Riddle clasped his hands behind his back.

"But instead of helping, as you should since you gave Rubeus an ultimatum that he'll expect you to follow through regardless of any amendment on your part, you chose to cripple further his research by staying away, and wasting your time with..."

"Don't say it." her peremptory tone was enough to make Tom close his mouth, but not enough to erase his all-too-persuasive words. 

Minerva hardly appreciated being talked to in such a way, she enjoyed even less being told she was wrong. But she was a Gryffindor, and no matter how much she hated it, there was merit to Riddle's words.

...

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