The Illusionist and the Viper (Harry Potter: Tom Riddle AU)

[Varangian9]

Well, this is only a oneshot right now because I liked the idea. I thought eventually of writing it as a full story, however I don't really know where it would go after Hanussen dies besides just repeating Voldemort's canon career.

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Berlin in the dying days of Weimar was a world on the edge of apocalypse. Its culture and cabarets, the frenzied life of the capital and it's politics, went on and would soon be swept away like Sodom and Bloody Nineveh when the world was young. Athens and Rome and Petersburg. And all cities in all conflagrations to come.

Erik Jan Hanussen, once Herschmann Steinschneider, now reborn through countless transformations - moved through his fevered physical and mental landscape like a shark through bloody waters. His wand lay concealed beneath bespoke tailoring, as hidden as his blood. As far as Mage and Muggle were concerned, he was the only magician in his family. To Durmstrang, this had seemed to matter a great deal. And to the Muggles, each of his prophecies was a delicate weaving of genuine magic and exquisite fraud. He could not stop the revolution. Nobody could. His most eager pupil was Germany's destiny, even if he was merely a "heroic tenor" as Herr Spengler had called him and not the Siegfried that Germany needed. Hanussen, master of illusion, held no illusions in his head. Rivers of blood would soon stain and cleanse the world to a greater degree than they ever had before.

Well that was in the nature of things. He might still enjoy himself for the time being. The Danish aristocrat would drift into a nervous sleep soon before the light of dawn. The end was coming unavoidably. He didn't know how much time he had left. He only wished he had more time.

The air in Wool's Orphanage carried a different quality to the decadent and dying new Germany - stale dreams and resignation pressed between gray walls and iron beds. All the children were gray as well. For Tom Riddle - tall for his age, dark haired and pale - the other children's worries and fears sang to him like perfectly tuned instruments, waiting to be played. Hanussen would later consider that the boy was the most handsome he would ever see.

When Hanussen first appeared in Mrs. Cole's office one snowy evening, Tom observed him from the shadows with a tiger's focus. The man's grace carried the weight of calculated performance. But beneath the polished veneer, Tom sensed a spirit strangely akin to himself and he was glad.

"A distant cousin of the boy's mother," Hanussen explained, his forged documents as immaculate as his tailoring. "Our family has only recently learned of young Tom's existence." Mrs. Cole's skepticism wavered before his continental charm and carefully constructed paper trail.

"The boy shows unusual aptitudes. Oh yes, I can tell," Hanussen murmured to Mrs. Cole as she frowned slightly. He poured her another glass of kirsch, his Austrian accent a masterwork of artifice. Tom caught the microscopic hesitations before certain phrases, the way the man's eyes mapped exits while appearing utterly at ease.

Their first lesson unfolded in the orphanage's abandoned chapel, where white winter light filtered through dusty windows. Hanussen drew his wand with theatrical flourish.

"Magic," he said, studying Tom's cold intensity, "is merely the highest form of theater. The audience - magical or Muggle - craves mystery. They long to believe in powers greater than themselves." His eyes held something hungry beneath their confident surface. "Show me what you can do, young Mr. Riddle."

Tom demonstrated his natural talents - making things move, hurting without touching (Hanussen had conjured some small animals), commanding serpents. Each display earned a thoughtful nod from Hanussen.

"Impressive but unrefined," Hanussen observed. "You compel through fear alone. Consider instead how fear and hope might be woven together." He conjured intricate illusions - phantasms that inspired both terror and desperate desire. "The trick is not merely to frighten, but to make them thank you for their fear." As he demonstrated his abilities, Hanussen noted how the boy's dark eyes would light up with a primal excitement and he would shift his weight from side to side. Hanussen did not care for such expressions of happiness, when the boy's expressions were almost bestial in their intensity.

Through the long cold months of winter, their lessons continued. The other children at Wool's recoiled from Hanussen's presence like mice sensing a snake. Billy Stubbs, who had lost his rabbit to Tom's boredom months before, pressed himself against the dormitory walls whenever the Austrian passed, his fingers working anxiously at his collar. Little Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop, still haunted by memories of that seaside cave, watched Hanussen's visits with a funny mixture of terror and desperate hope - perhaps this elegant stranger would finally take Tom away and end their torment. Yet while Tom would leave for hours at a time, the older boy always came back.

One of the kitchen maids whispered to the older children that she'd seen shadows dancing in impossible ways beneath the chapel door during Tom and Hanussen's lessons. The children of Wools developed elaborate rituals to avoid crossing paths with either of them - The counted stairs and muttered soft prayers. They pressed lucky pennies until their palms bled. Fear haunted the orphanage halls and the shadows would remain forever after.

The lessons extended beyond mere spellcraft. Hanussen brought Tom to his Berlin performances, where the boy observed from backstage as his mentor wove magic and manipulation into seamless theater. The contrast between Tom's two worlds grew ever starker. Wool's Orphanage remained a study in English constraint – all rigid angles and suppressed emotions. The children's threadbare clothes and hollow eyes spoke of a nation still haunted by one war while unknowingly awaiting two more, courtesy of Hanussen's most promising pupils.

Berlin had a desperate vitality as the young Republic gave way to what would be called the new Germany. The streets throbbed with military parades and dazzled with decadent cabarets, uniformed thugs and painted performers shared space easily. Hanussen's Palace of the Occult rose like a temple to excess. A temple of manufactured mystery that hummed with both power and calculated fraud which itself was power.

SS officers leaned forward in their chairs, enraptured, as Hanussen divined their futures with a mixture of true divination (The greatest curse of his life) and exquisite flattery. He was their beloved Aryan mystic, their prophet of the Reich's destiny in the east, and he played them like perfectly tuned instruments while hiding both his blood and the true extent of his magical abilities behind a cloak of shadowy misdirection.

But Tom saw something else, and it troubled him. A wizard debasing himself before creatures who should have been beneath his notice. The raw power of a true wizard deserved better than to be prostituted as cheap parlor tricks for the entertainment of Muggle filth.

In Hanussen's private study, ancient grimoires - some dating as far back as old Ephesus and had been saved from the flames in the days the good word had spread widely and grown in power - shared shelf space with dossiers on prominent members of the Nazi Party, which he had himself recently joined. Real magical artifacts sat beside props for fraudulent séances. Tom absorbed both magical knowledge and political insight, even as his contempt for Hanussen's methods slowly turned into something harder and colder. In his blood and in his brains, Tom was not a politician and had no use for politics. Though Hanussen thought he could one day make a brilliant politician out of the boy.

The evening Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer himself, sat for a private séance, Tom watched from concealment as his mentor wove prophetic visions of a heroic Nordic racial destiny to the small, bespectacled man with the round face and weak chin, while subtly embedding magical suggestions. The power dynamic fascinated and disgusted him - a wizard choosing to manipulate savages rather than dominate them, to guide rather than rule.

"-And you mistake survival for victory," Tom observed afterward, watching Hanussen prepare for yet another performance. "How long before your precious Muggles discover what you are? Playing the Aryan prophet while hiding your Jewish blood - and for what? To impress these beasts?"

Hanussen paused in adjusting his immaculate tie, eyes meeting Tom's in the mirror. "Power takes many forms, my young friend. Sometimes the appearance of submission is the quickest path to control. They believe themselves masters while dancing to my tune."

"Then they're fools," Tom replied coldly. "True power needs no such games. I don't understand why we have to hide from them at all."

Hanussen's laugh held genuine amusement. "All power is a game, Tom, and there is much you don't understand. The only question is whether you prefer to play openly or from the shadows." He turned, studying his protégé with calculating eyes. "Let them hate me, as long as they fear me, eh? You take dear young Caligula too much to heart. Consider how fear might instead be seasoned with hope, how terror can be made more potent by offering glimpses of salvation. Much easier to keep the people in line that way, don't you think, Tom?"

Riddle looked at him with simple disdain. "Power cannot exist solely in the shadows for long."

One particularly bitter evening, after watching another parade of Nazis seeking Hanussen's prophecies, Tom's contempt overflowed. "You could destroy them all. Yet you choose to serve them instead."

"Because, my dear boy, the world is changing. Power flows more and more through organized institutions, through movements, through carefully crafted narratives. Raw force alone is perhaps insufficient and out of date. And this applies to both worlds."

"You sound like a coward."

"And you sound like a child." Rare irritation flickered across Hanussen's sallow features. Tom noticed the heavy bags under his eyes. "You see the sword but miss the hand that wields it. What I mean to say, these Muggles you despise - they're building machines of war that could cause trouble even for our kind. Better to guide from within than to attack from without."

The lessons in the chapel went on. Hanussen taught Tom to layer his magic with theatrical flourishes, to make simple levitation seem like grand cosmic manipulation. "Watch," he would command, transforming a candle's flame into writhing shapes while his left hand performed the actual spell work unseen. "The audience's eyes follow what you wish them to see, while the illusionist makes moves elsewhere."

He taught Tom to modulate his voice – how to drop it to a whisper that commanded more attention than a shout, how to layer words with subtle compulsion. They spent hours practicing the precise stance that suggested both authority and benevolence. Tom learned to curl his lips into several distinct variations of a smile, each calculated to elicit a specific response.

Hanussen's more esoteric lessons focused on the manipulation of memory and perception. He demonstrated how to plant suggestions that would bloom into full-formed thoughts in a target's mind days later. They practiced on rats at first, then graduated to the other orphans – subtle alterations that left their victims questioning their own sanity. Tom proved an especially apt pupil at this art.

After particularly intense lessons in both magic and manipulation, Hanussen would sometimes study his young protégé with an expression that mixed pride and unease. "I am nursing a viper for the whole world." And then he smiled.

Their final lesson occurred mere weeks before Tom's departure for Hogwarts. Hanussen, fresh from another séance, found his protégé practicing darker curses in the study.

"You have learned much," Hanussen observed, "but still you mistake dominance for power. The truly powerful need not bare their fangs with every smile."

"And you mistake servitude for cunning," Tom replied. "All your careful deceptions, your political games - in the end they're all meaningless and you're still performing tricks for creatures beneath your notice."

Something dangerous flickered in Hanussen's eyes. "Perhaps. But I shape the hand that moves nations." He poured himself a cognac. "You could be truly great, you know. You have gifts I can only dream of. But you are blind to all subtlety, my young friend."

"Power is power," Tom said simply. "You're simply masking your own weakness with your pointless games. I- think you should stay in England."

Hanussen studied him for a long moment. "I fear I have still taught you both too much and too little." He raised his glass in sardonic salute. "May you learn wisdom before your strength destroys you. I will see you again at Hogwarts."

When Albus Dumbledore arrived at Wool's Orphanage, he found a Tom Riddle subtly different from what he might have expected. The boy had a calculated charm which it didn't take long to get past, but beneath it lay something colder and more settled than mere childhood megalomania. When Dumbledore demonstrated magic, Tom showed neither surprise nor wonder, but his face twisted in a way that made Dumbledore wonder.

"Professor," Tom asked, "what does the Ministry of Magic think about Muggles who know of our existence?"

The question carried weights Dumbledore couldn't fully understand. He spoke of secrecy statutes and careful regulation, while Tom thought of Hanussen entertaining SS officers with performances that mixed true magic with theatrical fraud.

News of Hanussen's death reached Tom midway along his first year's journey - a brief note describing a body found in a Berlin forest. He received the information with clinical detachment, seeing it as final proof of his mentor's ultimate failure. Yet Hanussen's influence lingered in his mind in subtle ways for all the days of his life.

Years later, as Lord Voldemort rose to power, he would employ methods that would have made Hanussen proud. At least sometimes. Though where his mentor had foolishly sought to influence Muggle politics from within, Voldemort worked patiently to tear down the barriers between the magical and mundane worlds entirely. Muggles after all, were only fit to be slaves, and Magic was Might.

Yet in quiet moments amid stormy war, Lord Voldemort would sometimes recall Hanussen. He had learned his lessons well, though perhaps not quite as his mentor had intended. In the end, both men had been forced to reinvent themselves - Hanussen to survive within the system he was born into, Voldemort to destroy all existing world systems entirely.

And in the end, perhaps they were not so different. That both of their chosen paths led equally to destruction was the greatest lesson never grasped.