A/N: English isn't my native language. Consider yourselves warned.
Tom dreamt.
He was sitting on a cot in... somewhere.
- cramped little space and spider webs -
/a cupboard/
...Yes. In a cupboard. How quaint.
The cot creaked under his weight as he shifted in his seat and looked around. A terrified little spider quickly climbed up the wall and disappeared in the corner.
Tom frowned. He hardly saw any reason why he would be sitting in a cupboard, of all places, and neither did he know
- a sob, a sniff and a hiccup grating on his nerves very quickly -
why there would be some brat, whom he have never seen before, sitting next to him.
Tom frowned, thoughtful. He eyed the boy's little frame that was shaking ever so slightly. No, he wasn't one of those brats from the orphanage, of that Tom was certain. Still, the boy made a sight pathetic enough – from his rumpled sweater to a pair of particularly ugly glasses perched dangerously on the tip of his nose – to easily pass as one of them. And he was crying for some dumb reason, no doubt, clutching a teddy bear for a dear life, as if the stupid toy could make anything better.
He snorted. It itched him to do something mean to the boy, just to see, if could make him snivel even more in his snot nosed misery. Perhaps he'd take away his precious teddy
- battered and old, with its eye-button dangling on a bright coloured string -
and throw away somewhere? Or better, burn it in the backyard?
/I didn't do anything, I swear!/
That thought angered him. All brats were like that; they wailed and threw fits, claimed their innocence as if they were the victims there, and then pointed their grubby, accusing fingers at Tom.
But there was some justice in the world, as it seemed. Tom watched the little boy – his hunched shoulders, his foggy glasses, fat tears rolling down his cheeks. He watched, feeling a kind of...vicious satisfaction, he supposed. Whatever had the boy broken down like that, the brat probably deserved it.
Served him right, then.
/her hair just...! Suddenly, just turned blue, as if it was - /
So juvenile, he sneered. Whatever for one would want to pull a meaningless prank that was bound to get him caught soon afterwards?
/- magic!/
Tom blinked.
No, that couldn't be right. There was no way this pathetic, snot nosed brat could be a wizard too!
But, for as much as he wanted to deny it – should he choose to ignore the messy appearance and ugly glasses...
He did not feel so vicious any longer. Instead, an emotion of something uncomfortable settled in his stomach. Tom bit his lip. He didn't wish to remember it, but there had once been a time when he had felt misery gnaw at his little heart, and had shed a tear or two.
(That was a long time ago, though. Before he found out he can make others hurt too.)
Tom hated this dream and the cupboard now, for reminding him of that. And what made it even worse for some reason, the boy was still crying, as if he didn't know Tom was sitting right next to him.
And then, there was the buzz – curious sound only Tom could ever hear, rapidly getting louder.
Potential, a promise of endless possibilities.
- Not knowing why, not really, Tom raised his hand.
He would not know it for many, many years to come, but at that moment something had changed.
A shift in power. A ripple in time.
A whisper of touch and a simple idea. There, there. You are not alone.
. . .
Startled, the boy looked around his empty cupboard.
Tom woke up with a start. It took him a minute of starring in confusion at the curtains of his four-poster to realise he was in the first year students' dormitory, rather than in a cramped, dirty cupboard.
Later that morning he was getting ready for his first lessons on magic ever, while pointedly ignoring poorly veiled jabs and insults of his house-mates, not about to let them damper his mood. He did not remember his dream any more.
"Formerly, I, Zhuang Zou, dreamt that I was a butterfly, a butterfly flying about, feeling that it was enjoying itself. I did not know that it was Zhou. Suddenly, I awoke and was myself again, the veritable Zou. I did not know whether it had formerly been Zou dreaming that he was a butterfly, or it was now a butterfly dreaming that it was Zou. But between Zou and a butterfly there must be a difference. This is a case of what is called the Transformation of Things."
/Zhuangzou