Prologue:

Winter of 2012: Sixteen years after the defeat of the Boy Who Died and the marriage of Ginevra Weasley and Tom Riddle, fifteen years after the birth of their first son, Sebastian.

Bitterness bound them together, out in the miniscule village of Göllersdorf, population barely three thousand, in the hills north of Vienna. Minevra, Lee, Dean, and Griselda ate a quick meal of kidney beans and bread before their afternoon’s work.

Minevra had to go tend to the Master – since she was absolutely ancient, her nose wasn’t what it had been in her prime, back when she still had the power to transform into a feline Animagi. That was all the better, for the tasks required by her of the Master.

Dean went back to slogging away at the treatise he was working on. With a positive, if mixed, reaction to his pamphlets and flyers, especially among Muggles, he was now working on two separate books that would tell the same story, the story of the Martyr. He was beloved by the Master for his skill at whipping up support for their cause – and his role as comforter and bed-companion for the Master.

Lee, as usual, worked on some new gimmick that exploded at regular intervals, rocking the cottage to its foundations. If it weren’t for the sheer usefulness of his creations, the Master, immersed in the most delicate stages of his magnum opus, would surely have already killed Lee out of hand. But if Lee couldn’t find some ingenious way to deliver Griselda’s work, then the Master’s plot would fall flat.

Griselda’s work consisted of relying on her rather creepy goblin allies for transportation to various repositories of scripts and scrolls… and newspapers. Lee and Dean didn’t want to know the wherefores and whys of the goblin’s obedience to her, but they did know that the leader of the clan, a big ugly brute of a fellow, visited Griselda’s room every week, and that knowledge was too much as it was. But they would need the scraps of media she procured for them – old news, articles no one would think to seek out, because the era in which they were from was a paltry, forgotten time, left in the dust by the ‘glorious new era’ of the Courts and the Meritocracy.

And, too, Griselda had contributed her twisted collection of pureblood relics – her probably-half-goblin ancestry had made her rather fanatical, during the war, about collecting… samples. Samples from the pureblooded lines, that were so worrisomely close to dying out. Ironic, that her slavering pureblood-worship would now let the Master work his great masterpiece and drive out the foul purebloods who were ruling the world these days.

“My Lord.”

“Liegeman.”

“A representative of the Austrian Court to see you, with the report we’ve been expecting.”

“Excellent.” The stocky, brawny red-head strode from his Lord’s side to the door, escorting the pencil-thin man, with hand on sword the whole way back to the reception dais.

The Austrian knelt, and the Liegeman stood behind him, still poised to strike. George took his duty to guard his brother-in-law’s life utterly seriously.

“The report?” prompted the Lord, casually, when the man finished his rambling greetings and hailings from the Continent.

“Yes. We’ve been tracking Ms. McGonagall as ordered. Her routines are perfectly normal for a woman of a hundred and sixty-six – minimal movement from the cottage, the deed of which is in her name alone, and daily trips into the village to buy her groceries.”

“But?” the Lord prompted, in a small display of the Legilimency that had given him such a famed reputation as prescient seer of souls.

“But two things are off. The first, the amount of groceries she buys. While paltry, it still seems rather more than a single woman would eat. We suspect more people are living with her, though of course, her wards prevent us confirming that guess.” He coughed. “The second… I am still not convinced of its legitimacy, m’Lord. But – my nephew, a very young Auror who drew a lot to follow her sometime last month… he insists that the one time he got close to her, he scented… decay.”

“Decay. What kind?” Lord Voldemort asked intently.

“The kind associated with dark, dark magic, my lord. My nephew insists that he believes the woman to be a… the word in English is hard… a – corpse-mage?”

“Necromancer,” George supplied, looking ill.

“Yes, thank you, nee-cro-manzer. The boy is convinced we are looking at a neecromanzer, because of this pungent smell. Of course, it was in a market, and there are any number of pungent smells in a rural market such as that. Fresh fish, rotting vegetables, livestock…”

“Yet he is convinced it was an odor of death,” the Lord summed up in a quiet, serious tone.

“Yes, m’Lord, and so my government wished me to pass on all information that may be of use to you. Better to follow many false trails, it is said, than to ignore the one on which a serpent lies in wait –” he caught sight of the emblems on the wall and above Lord Voldemort’s chair, remembered who he was talking to, and gulped. “Your pardon if I offend, m’Lord…”

“Now, now, serpents are indeed deadly,” Lord Voldemort said lightly, “and Merlin knows I would not wish there to be any not accounted for by myself. Thank you, good sir, for travelling to brief us and our Court,” and they launched into the polite tête-à-tête of goodbyes that marked the benevolent, harmonious rule of the Dark Lord’s Courts in Europe.

Once the man and any surveillance spells he might have unwittingly borne along were long gone, Tom Riddle retreated into his old office, where Fred was spreading out various papers relating to the mysterious life Minevra McGonagall had led in exile. “Everything’s here, Tom,” he said, gesturing to the reams. “I’ve already got the transcription of the Austrian report.”

“Great,” Tom murmured, “we’ll need that. But first and foremost – go to Snape’s office, and tell him to triple-check the security arrangements for my children. If she’s involved in anything as Dark as the Austrians suggest…”

They nodded grimly, their concern for their nieces and nephews paramount in their minds. Fred did groan, though, as they grabbed pinches of Floo powder, “You know how exasperated Snape’s going to get about this? He always gets defensive at the idea his arrangements are anything short of the best…”

Tom snorted. “You’re right, of course. Just tell him he can explain it to Ginny, if he has any complaints about the hassle he goes through for her children.”

The twins exchanged wicked smirks. Ginny and Snape had grown very close, keeping each other company when he was between women and she was waiting for her Lord. The formidable Headmaster was defenseless against their sister. “Yes, my Lord,” they chorused, and stepped through the flames.

In a pitch-black cellar under a Swiss university, a knotted, withered old hag stumbled through mouldy stacks of papers. “Come back here with that light, damn your leathery hide,” she hissed to her companion, who returned to her side and obediently cast his green-glowing gaze across the stacks.

“Wal-, Wend-, Whin-… oh, yes, lovely… Witch… witch-witch-witch… where can you be… ah-hah!” She seized a sheaf of magazines, upon which were emblazoned headlines such as ‘Revenge by Polyjuice,’ ‘19 anti-cheating spells to use on faithless wizards,’ ‘Gwenog Jones’ tips for lonely girls,’ or ‘Hottest robes in Milan!’ and on each, the title, Witchy Girls of Today.

It took endlessly mundane skimming to find an article of the type she was searching for, but in the end, the feature from the September 1997 held nearly everything Griselda could have hoped for, right down to the title: ‘Young Love’s Bliss for WGT’s favorite Hero-Heartthrob!’

“Ohhh, yes,” she crooned, clutching the magazine tightly. “Master will be overjoyed…”

The goblin escorting her peered over her shoulder. Spying the article Griselda wanted, he snorted, and muttered in a gravelly tone, “Cute couple,” as he studied the photo of the redheaded girl and black-haired boy.

A.N. - Alright, folks, here we're bridging the gap between the last chapter of TRttCoS and the time where Riddle's Inheritance begins - the first chapter will be posted shortly. Watch this space :)