The green markings of a time-telling charm Langston Mulciber cast told him it was 10:46. The Hogwarts express was to depart in less than fifteen minutes.

"Well come on, chaps. Get a grip." Langston muttered to himself, as his sharp, blue eyes scanned through the window, in search of his friends on platform 9¾. They were entering third year; it was time to stop behaving like children.

Thankfully, the door of his compartment began to noiselessly slide. It would be the first time that Dru or Edmund used a pulling charm in practice. A small sense of pride flickered in Langston's chest. However, the opened door revealed neither the stout, blonde-haired frame of Druettus Avery, nor the gangly, hunchbacked figure of Edmund Spritedust.

To his surprise, a small, pale boy with neatly combed black hair stood confidently at the doorway, his dark eyes focused on Langston.

"Hello, may I sit with you?" The boy asked.

"Sure."

"Thank you. Good to meet you; I'm Tom Riddle."

The boy positioned himself directly across Langston. Who was this boy? His body language displayed no sign of concession of fear, as was due from a firstie - however, he had opened the door with magic; even Langston wasn't able to do that, until second year. Maybe his family had instructed him? But Langston didn't know any Riddles, and the boy's robes looked rather tattered. Was he a mudblood?

"My name's Langston. Langston Emory Mulciber."

"Well, Langston, you seem like an able wizard. Are you?" Riddle's head slightly tilted, his small lips curving into smile.

The question threw Langston off- what was the mudblood playing at? Perhaps he sensed the dismissive tone in Langston's voice, and was juggling to keep himself in Langston's good graces. Although arrogance was not a Slytherin virtue, a sense of self-worth was.

"I can hold my own just fine."

"Oh, I've no doubt about that." Riddle's angled head still held the annoyingly infectious smile.

The boy was trying to flatter him, and he knew. He suspected the boy knew that he knew, and that, despite his self-awareness, Riddle's charm was working.

"Would you mind showing, to me, your magic? I'd be honoured."

"We're in a train compartment." replied Langston, flatly.

"Something small, perhaps?"

"If you insist."

Withdrawing his wand, Langston conjured two sheets of paper. A folding charm made them into two small, humanoid figures. A smile curved on Langston's lips as he performed the animating charm, a sixth year spell. The two paper-men stood up and faced one another. Langston casted a glance at Riddle, who looked already immersed at the display.

"Fámulis animam tuam." The two paper-men then turned to one another, and began to start wordlessly and wandlessly cast hexes and jinxes at one another. Langston watched enthusiastically, as the two paper-men were now supposed to be imbued with his personality. Both were set to hate the other.

He recognised each of the micro-spells the paper men cast, for they would be the same that he'd choose in a duel. His older brother, Thorell, had taught him the personality-imbuing spell, which was not in the Hogwarts syllabus. It was something to do with Thorell's elusive job in Germany.

The taller paper-man successfully tripped his opponent with a conjured, miniature rope. Without a second of merciful thought, the taller paper-man incinerated his opponent, who moaned in a way that comically sounded halfway between that of a man in pain and the burning of cinders in a fireplace.

"Brilliant." Riddle dipped his chin in approval. There was respect in his eyes, but not adoration- as Langston had hoped. Respect, however, was sufficient.

"You aren't shabby yourself, for a mudblood, you know." A feeling of regret passed Langston as quickly it came. The boy, if he were to amount to anything, would need to know what he was, after all. "Few firsties could cast a pulling charm like that. That smoothly, I mean. The door made no sound."

"A mudblood?" Riddle's reply came with surprising quickness. Although the smile remained on his face, a dark, serious sheen came across his eyes, which seemed to say, whatever a mudblood is, I am definitely not.

Feeling a strange and sudden need to justify himself, Langston made haste to reply.

"Well, your parents aren't magical, are they? Anyhow, we address the magical kids born from not-magical parents as mudbloods, because their blood is, well, thick and mucky, much like that of mud."

As he finished speaking, Langston realised that his hand was firmly clasping his wand. He internally chided himself for fearing an unsorted first year.

"I grew up in an orphanage with filthy non-magicals. Never met my parents, but I'm not a mudblood. What's a pulling charm?" Riddle spoke, as if he were merely stating a fact, and not redressing an insult.

Langston considered this; the boy did feel powerful- a mudblood would not dare to seek him as company. Riddle's face and eyes seem oddly contended again, as if Langston had never slighted him. For some strange reason, Langston felt that the boy did not, in fact, suddenly forget his slight.

"You don't know what a pulling charm is? Are you trying to be queer? You opened the door with it. Static wand motion, and all."

"Wand? Oh, no. I opened it with my hand. Would you like to see?" Riddle inferred that Langston could not, like he supposedly could, wandlessly open a door. Langston wondered if Riddle was trying to impress him by deception; not even Thorell could perform controlled, wandless magic to that extent until he was in sixth year.

As Riddle's forearm raised at the door, the door opened, but with an accompanying sound that suggested it had been opened from the outside, by hasty, physical force. Langston's two imbecile friends had, at last, arrived. Druettus Avery's beefy figure was followed by Edmund Spritedust's tall, hunchbacked one. Edmund's arm was around the waist of a short, ponytailed blonde second-year Ravenclaw, whose name began with V and who belonged to the Maestro family.

"Mulce, good to see you, mate." said Dru, before slumping down besides Langston.

"And you, Dru."

"Hey, Mulce." said Edmund, as he gestured for the Maestro girl to sit besides Tom, perhaps so that she would be sandwiched between them, and thus be in an awkward position to leave.

"Edmund, how was your break? Busy, I presume?" With the implication, Langston winked at the Maestro girl, who slightly blushed.

"All right, I suppose. Chaps, Veronica will be ragging with us for the day. Who's the kid?" Emund dramatically gestured at the girl, as if displaying a particularly impressive work of transfiguration.

"Hullo." Veronica quietly said.

"Dru, Ed- allow me to introduce Tom Riddle. He is going to show us something." Langston gestured at the door. However, before Riddle could reach his arm out again, Druettus Avery interrupted.

"Riddle? Mulce, a mudblood? Really-" But as Dru reached for his wand, Langston knew it was too late.

"Avis!" Riddle's high-pitched voice punctured through the compartment, as a small, emerald-green bird shot at Druettus Avery's face, rapidly pecking him like a dart returning over and over against a board. Langston stifled a snort.

"Stop. Get that- counter- Mulce! Muddy little-" Dru's hands were scrambling against his face, as Edmund unsuccessfully tried to disperse the bird. Langston, however, was for the moment too marvelled at the fact that Riddle had managed to not only perform a sixth-year conjuration charm, but also somehow turned his subject into a weapon against Dru.

"Finite Incantatem!" The bird was gone; not by any of the third-year Slytherins' doing, but by that of a heavily blushing Veronica Maestro. Edmund proudly patted her back.

Dru's expression was somewhere between an expression of panic and a glaring scowl. Riddle's face looked impassive, a single eyebrow lifted, with his wand aimed directly at Dru's face.

"Now, now, let's all cool down. As I was saying, Riddle shall show us something." Langston interceded in a prim tone, assuming authority.

For a brief moment, Druettus looked defiant. However, as he weighed his options, he decided to concede, and rested into the padding of the compartment couch.

Riddle withdrew his wand, and raised his bare hand. With his thumb crossed against his palm, Riddle slightly inclined his fingers in the direction of the door, causing it to gracefully slide into closure. For a while, all were too scared and too beholden to break the silence engendered by Riddle's wandless magic.

Within an hour, however, the tension had mostly dissipated. Dru and Ed were engaged in a conversation that capriciously fluctuated between the topics of their holidays, Quidditch, Grindelwald and the girls of their year, never mind that Veronica Maestro was slumped against Ed, his shoulder a pillow for her head.

Riddle had revealed to to Langston that his first time at Diagon Alley was unaccompanied. Having spent several hours at Flourish and Blotts, Riddle managed to memorise a small arsenal of spells, which included the sixth year bird-conjuring charm. Unable to afford anything apart from his second-hand first year textbooks, Riddle asked Langston if he could borrow some of his.

Hours passed as Riddle altered between reading Langston's The First Principles of Warding and The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 3, practicing some of the charms and jinxes of the latter to an astonishing degree of accuracy, looking out the window, and occasionally asking Langston questions about the wizarding world.

Langston and Spritedust bid Riddle farewell, as they parted ways respectively for the threstral carriages, and the boats of the Black Lake.

Seated in the great hall, disappointed murmurs spread through the Slytherin table as they came to realise that neither the head boy or girl was of their house; the first time in three years without a Slytherin representative in the head prefect positions. Langston noticed that the entourage of new students included a dozen or so older students, who Dippet's introductory speech explicated as refugees from the continent, fleeing 'Grindelwald's cause.' A few of the Slytherins around Langston snickered.

Sorting began with Tiberius Aadnevik's placement into Ravenclaw. Whereas most around him, including Dru, Ed, Mitcham Parkinson and Osanna Nightingale looked bored and somewhat impatient for the feast, Langston anxiously waited for the name of Riddle to be called. Alphard Black's placement into Slytherin was met with roaring acclamation. As Jules Ohlandt was sorted into Hufflepuff, Langston's heartbeat hastened to the enthusiastic clapping of the badger-house.

"Riddle, Thomas."

Riddle confidently strode to the stool, placing himself on it as though he had run through the sorting ceremony a dozen times before. Almost as soon as professor Merrythought placed the hat on Riddle's head, it barked, with seemingly absurd enthusiasm, "Slytherin!"

Predictably, Riddle's welcoming applause was by far the least cheerful of his lot; Slytherin house rarely received a newcomer with an unfamiliar surname. Although Langston's mirthless, calculated claps ceased as they came, he could not help but smirk as Riddle seated himself between fellow, newly sorted first years Edgar Nott and Jürgen Drachenzahm.