Written for the Harry Potter Chapter Challenge (The Very Secret Diary - Write about Tom Riddle)

Written for The Kids Asked for it Competition (Tom Riddle, Albus Dumbledore)

Tom Riddle's Bad Day

Autumn at Hogwarts was no different to any other season, apart from that it was in between warm and freezing cold. Tom would wake up in the morning, his toes almost frozen off, but by the middle of the day he was in a sweat as he made his way slowly to classes.

Tom hated this season, and he hated the rapid change in the weather from eight in the morning to midday. It put him in a foul mood.

"Watch it, you clumsy fool!" he snapped at a frightened first year as the boy's overly large school bag knocked Tom's books from his arms.

"S-sorry," the boy stammered. "I'll help you clean it up."

"You've done enough," Tom said irritably before the boy could even squat to help.

"O-okay." The Ravenclaw first year hurried away, bursting into tears when he thought he was out of ear shot.

"The people this place takes in," Tom muttered as he took out his wand to gather his books. "Idiots."

In even more of a bad mood now, Tom went to his Potions lesson, opting to sit by himself and finish everything on his own. It got done faster that way.

Next was Transfiguration with Professor Dumbledore. Tom couldn't stand the man, but in a way, he rather feared him. He seemed to know every movement of his students whilst they were in class, and although gentle, strict, too. Tom was wary of him, and dared not put a toe out of line when in his class.

Dumbledore wanted them to turn animals into wine glasses, a task for which he called Tom to the front. With a smile, he addressed the class.

"Young Tom here is quite skilled at Transfiguration, as some of you may be already aware of."

Tom stared up into the blue eyes of the Professor. What was the old coot on about?

Dumbledore simply continued. "Just the other day he managed to transform an unsuspecting first year's Galleon collection into a bag full of garden worms. How someone who has never learnt anything past a simple Transfiguration spell could do that is beyond me, but I assure you, Tom succeeded."

Tom scowled. How on earth had Dumbledore known that? That had been in the privacy of the Slytherin common room. And that first year had been irritating him with his loud laugh and nosey questions.

Dumbledore's smile only broadened, apparently realising he had caught a misbehaving student off guard. "Tom, if you may instruct the class on how to do it…." The old man stepped aside, while Tom stood in front of the class, all eyes on him.

Not one to be embarrassed by such a thing, Tom cleared his throat and removed his wand from the inside pocket of his school robe. Dumbledore may have caught him off guard, but he would show him what to do.

Portraying the confidence of a Hogwarts professor, Tom instructed the class in how to change their animals into goblets, and in his opinion, did it rather flawlessly, too.

After two students successfully did it, he smiled, turned to Dumbledore and asked, "May I return to my seat, Professor?" as politely as he could.

Dumbledore nodded. "You may."

Tom was glad to be out of that dumb class, hurrying first to the Great Hall for lunch. He sat in solemn silence as he ate, and once again left for his next class, History of Magic. It was that subject Tom found the most interesting.

It wasn't because of Professor Binns' slow drawl about the goblin wars – certainly not – but the fact that the boring ghost left many hints that no other student bothered to listen to. There was a lot of interesting facts in between every useless piece of information and Tom eagerly wrote them down. Of course there had to have been a way for dark magic to prosper in society. There had to be a reason. No one realised it.

It wasn't until the end of the double period did things begin to go wrong for Tom. He had been scribbling some notes into his book when a loud bang came from just outside the classroom. A quick glance at Binns told him that the professor had not noticed – or cared for – the disruption, as he continued to drone on.

Screaming soon filled the corridors, and a loud whisper filled the classroom. Tom scowled. Of all the moments this had to happen, it had to be in that moment. He had just had an idea for a rather interesting spell he wanted to try, but someone had to ruin it before he could learn its exact use.

It was typical, though. His day had not gone well at all.

Muttering to himself, Tom joined the rest of his class by the door to discover what had caused the disruption. To his annoyance, it was some group of fifth years who had thought playing a prank on the school would be funny.

Not laughing, Tom noted their features and that they were in Hufflepuff house, before he returned to his desk, hoping Binns would repeat what he had just said.

Sadly, the professor hadn't even noticed the class had left their tables, and when they silenced, the ghost was now a few years ahead of where he had been before in his retelling.

"Of course," Tom muttered to himself. "Typical." He jabbed his quill so hard in frustration, it poked a whole in his parchment.

What a day this was turning out to be.

When the end of the day came – thank Merlin! – and dinner appeared on the table, Tom decided not to attend. He wasn't all that hungry, really, and quite frankly wasn't in the mood to socialise with anyone.

The night had grown cold after the day had been warm, and Tom thought he would be better off finishing his assignments in the library.

There were a few other students around when he entered, but they were all whispering loudly. Not at all satisfied by this, Tom quickly returned to the common room where it was still fairly quiet as most students were down at dinner.

He picked an armchair by the fireplace to sit in and contemplated everything that had happened.

First he had woken up with frozen toes, next to be almost knocked over by a first year who was running through the corridor. To end his terrible day, a bunch of idiots had also disrupted the most interesting History of Magic lesson, just because they thought it was funny.

Tom wasn't at all impressed.

He leaned his head back against the armchair and thought about how he might be able to rectify the situation. There were many things that went through his head, but nothing that seemed appropriate for the situation.

"Maybe in the morning," he said to himself, getting to his feet.

Other students were now beginning to pile into the common room, meaning it was Tom's turn to recluse to his bed and think.

It was cold, which meant he could get under the covers and think of a fitting punishment for those who had disrupted his day – particularly those annoying pranksters.

Changing into his pyjamas he rested his head against the pillow. He had hoped to have developed a plan by morning, but when he woke to sun shining in his eyes, he was furious to learn that he had not thought of anything.

The moment he had laid down he had fallen asleep, and that now meant that today would be another one of those horrible days.

Tom felt like cursing something.

I hope you all liked it! I had quite a bit of fun writing this. I tried to portray Tom's evilness, but in a lighter way if that makes sense. Please leave a review if you read it and let me know your thoughts. Much appreciated :)