A distant scream and a terrible thud woke Tom in the darkness of his bedroom. Heavy curtains were drawn tight against the tall windows beside his head. The room was tepid, the bleak tile of the walls holding onto the mercilessly humid July air. Tom blinked in the pitch darkness, the scratchy heaviness of the wool blankets suffocating him. He quickly extracted himself from their vice grip, his plain cotton shirt sticking to his skin. In the distance, he heard another howling scream, and an earth shattering crash, closer this time.

The bombs were falling.

Distantly, he heard the other children begin to fuss and cry as the bombs awoke them. He heard sudden clicking as the girls working at the orphanage came running to the nursery, down the hall from Tom's bedroom to answer to the growing cries from the babies.

Tom threw his covers off and stood from his bed, his bare feet hitting the moist tile floor. As he stood, another screaming bomb seemed to tear through the sky and land with so loud a crash that the orphanage shook. Tom balanced himself, seeing the reddish flames of the place where it had hit dimly flickering through the heavy curtains of his room.

He padded quickly over to his closet, where he hid his trunk and his Hogwarts things, and retrieved his Yew wand from the top shelf. If the Muggles were going to bomb themselves to smithereens, he was not going to be a victim. The wails of the other children had grown to a crescendo after this latest bomb. He could hear the matron, Mrs. Cole, shrilly giving out orders as the evacuation process began, hearing her boots clicking down the hallway. Suddenly, he heard the doorknob opening to his room and he hastily shoved his wand into the waistband of his pants, underneath his shirt.

's face appeared in the darkness, holding a candle, her thin greying hair sticking to her forehead and her eyes wide.

"Tom?" she called, laying eyes on him standing in the middle of the floor, "Come on, we have to get to the shelter..."

He nodded at her, and followed her out of the room. He followed her as she rushed to the nursery, passing other rooms with girls helping the children quickly into their shoes. He knew what she was going to say before she said it.

"Tom, we have too many babies for us all to carry. You and John, Mary and Lizzy will have to take one each."

He didn't reply, but met the other older children in the room. Mary, a thirteen year old girl with lank black hair, stood trembling. Another scream and a blast whirled outside and landed so close to them that the window rattled. Lizzy screamed, covering her head.

"Come on!" Mrs. Cole called, rushing them, "there's four babies that haven't been taken yet!"

Tom rushed to the back of the room near the window where a newborn was squalling throatily. Just as he reached the window, the screech of a bomb sounded off, horrifyingly close to them. The sound of the plane's engine rattled his head. He knew it was going to hit them. He threw himself down onto the floor just as the bomb exploded outside of the window. The glass blasted inwards, shattering and flying into the room. The other children and Mrs. Cole screamed.

After the world righted itself, Tom stood shakily to his feet and looked into the crib by the shattered window. Inside, the newborn had stopped crying. Large glass shards pierced the bedding and the infant's tiny body. It's eyes were open wide, reflecting the fire that was beginning to rage outside from the impact of the bomb. He turned away to where the other children clambered with screaming babies towards the door. Mrs. Cole strode forward and grabbed Tom's collar, dragging him forward.

"Come on, come on," she urged, but he could hear the catch in her voice as her eyes swept over the baby by the window.

He tripped over his feet as she pulled him forward and pushed him bodily through the door before her.

"Follow the others, I'm going to make sure everyone's gone!" she shouted after him. Tom didn't need telling twice. His bare feet pounded the tile floor as he ran to catch up to Mary, Lizzie and John, who were rushing down the staircase, babies in their arms. Lizzie was younger than them, about eight years old, and the baby was squirming, slowing her down. Tom snatched the baby out of her hands and edged her forward.

"Go! Keep going!" he commanded her, pressing the squirming, screaming infant to his chest with one arm and pushing the little girl ahead of him between her shoulder blades. Her nightgown was smudged with ash and her feet were bleeding from the broken glass. His own were sliced, his dark hair wet with sweat. The little girl was gasping for breath as she tried to keep up with them. They made it out of the orphanage, through a side door in the kitchen. Across the large muddy yard, the entrance to the underground bomb shelter that had been haphazardly set up was open with one of the matron girls screaming at them.

As they ran across the yard, Tom heard the drone of a plane engine above them, so close that it was as though its belly would scrape their heads. He heard the mechanical thunk as a bomb was let go.

Tom stopped dead in his tracks as the bomb tore screaming through the air, down towards them.

He thought quickly. He pulled the little girl, Lizzie by the arm, off balancing her so she fell backwards to the ground. He dropped the infant down on her belly and brandished his wand from his waistband, throwing himself bodily over the two children. He had no idea if this would work, but if he didn't try, he would die a pitiful death among the filthy swaths of a foolish Muggle conflict. He refused that to be his legacy.

He had read, in his leisure time at Hogwarts, a spell which would create a bubble-like shield around the caster that would neutralize anything that hit it. He remembered the incantation, and brandishing his wand upwards, muttered it.

"Neutroclipus!"

His world went black.