When he awoke, he was lying on his back. The acrid smell of fire burnt his nostrils, and he blearily opened his eyes. Clutched in his filthy hand was his wand. He quickly sat up, his head swimming, and shoved it into his waistband to hide it. He looked around and found himself in the scorched grass. Ahead of him, the prone form of the little girl Lizzy and the baby she'd been carrying lie. The baby was screaming and kicking. Lizzy looked pale, but when he limped over to her, he could tell she was still breathing. It was daytime. The sky was a pale blue, clouds drifting lazily by, completely unfazed by the rubble and death below them.

They'd survived, he noted dimly, his ears ringing painfully.

He looked over to where the bomb shelter was, and noticed it was empty. He turned towards the road and saw the brick wall surrounding the orphanage was broken and had fallen into the street. Mrs. Cole's face was blackened with soot, and her face was cut. He could vaguely hear her voice calling orders to the crying children and matron girls around her, who looked filthy and terrified, but alive. She turned and saw Tom standing in the lawn and looked as though she'd seen a ghost. Tom was confused, but then realized that they'd all been hit with a bomb– he, the baby and Lizzie had been hit directly.

She must have thought we were dead…

"Tom!" she called. He couldn't hear her voice, but he could read her lips.

One of the matron girls noticed the screaming baby in the lawn and climbed over the rubble of the brick fence to come and fetch it. When she gathered it in her arms, she looked over at Lizzy and saw that she was miraculously alive.

"Can you carry her?" the matron girl asked him.

He read her lips, and gingerly knelt by the skinny girl's form, lifting her effortlessly into his arms. Her white nightgown was ruined, scorched in so many places it was barely a garment at all. She was breathing peacefully. He limped slowly over to the wall with the matron girl, Lizzy in his arms.

When they were all together, he placed the girl alongside other children who were passed out, lined along the sidewalk. Mrs. Cole strode over to him, speaking. The ringing in his ears was incessant and he couldn't hear her.

She stopped trying to speak to him, and reached over with her sooty apron to wipe the sides of his ears. They must have been bleeding. Then she took his face in her two hands, something that she had never done before.

At this point in his life, Tom had been surreptitiously experimenting with Legilimency. He knew it wasn't a normal pursuit for a wizard his age, but he was no normal wizard his age. Muggles, he found, were the best to practice on because they had no concept of Legilimency and often wore their emotions on their minds as plain as day. She stared into his eyes, her dark ones boring into him, urging him to understand. He did.

Thank you, her mind screamed, Thank you thank you thank you thank you

She knew. Somehow, she knew. She knew he was different. She knew he could do things other children couldn't. She must somehow have known that he was the reason they were all still alive.

He hadn't meant the shield to be that effective, but he supposed, his raw skill was great enough that it was possible his shield had extended much further. He had never used the spell before.

A small lurch in his stomach reminded him that he had done magic outside of school.

Just then, he felt eyes on him, boring into him, and knew what he would see when he turned around.

Across the street, in an eye-sore of a puce suit, stood Albus Dumbledore.