The ten days following the meeting with Nancy and her little gang of street urchins had been the ten most terrifying days of Tom Marvolo Riddle's life. The entire reason that those ten nights had been the most terrifying of his life hadn't merely been because of the German bombs which seemed to fall all the time, but instead, it had been mainly because of the creature that had been following the lot of them. The creature that you should never ever let touch you if you wanted to live. He'd seen firsthand what the creature that had looked like a child in a gas mask could do when one of the children had been a bit slow on his second night with the group, but had sensed it was unnatural the moment he'd first laid eyes on it as it had chased them from a home they had been acquiring supplies from on the first night. The terror of Nancy and the other children was far too genuine, and it was catching in a place and time where running away was acceptable.

Since he knew it wasn't smart to go it alone during the Winter when there was a creature like that about walking the streets, especially since Nancy was so generously offering other people's food and shelter as well as safety in numbers, he'd done his best to restrain himself. Because the street children instinctively knew what he was and to be wary, and one of the bratlings was from Wool's and knew him by more than reputation, he'd turned the charm up extra-high so he wouldn't find himself reaching the appointed meeting place and finding that everyone else had abandoned him and gone somewhere else in order to get him out of their group. To get him out of their group and leave him for that unnatural creature to find.

The night of the twentieth had started like any other night, with the lot of them waking up in the latest of the abandoned or damaged houses they had taken shelter in. They'd had to adapt to a nocturnal routine because that was when the bombings were, and that was when they would best be able to get food or some nicknacks the ones amongst them who were more comfortable with stealing could fence. Nancy had been watching the house they were going to hit that night for days, and she seemed less uncomfortable with stealing from this lot, so it was likely that she wouldn't chide him as much over his little habit of walking off with anything portable and complain that he was going to bring the police down on their heads as she usually did. Nancy had pegged him for a thief on day one, and aside from laying down a few ground rules that she thought to be sensible, she generally let him have at it and only complained when the deed was done.

This night didn't turn out like the rest however. As well as another mouth to feed being added to the group, a mouth that had previously been evacuated from London only to return with the look of one who'd spent time living in the sort of hell that only other people could create, a complete stranger had turned up and turned things on their head. The man had slipped in unnoticed by everyone including him, startling everyone badly, which was unusual because all of them had learned to be wary and constantly on guard. What made this even more unusual, was the fact that something about the man who had snuck up on them practically screamed "Look at me!". The man practically exuded power, which marked him as a wizard, and a very powerful one at that.

Though part of him hoped that this man had come to bring him home where he belonged, he had never seen this man before in his life, either at Hogwarts or during his few trips to Hogsmeade. Wary, he dropped his hand to the wand he carried despite the fact that he couldn't use it if he wanted to stay out of Azkaban and return to Hogwarts should the school reopen. Having the wand was a comfort to him that reminded him that though he was currently in exile, he had a place to return to, and a place in society that was much higher than the one he currently occupied.

Before he could ask this strange wizard who obviously wasn't in the same circumstances as he was what he was doing here, the gas mask creature turned up and he and the rest were forced to flee into the night, their first good hot meal in a long time left mostly uneaten. Ernie, Nancy's second in command due to the fact that he was the oldest of them besides Nancy, led them back to the railyard where they had been sleeping the night before despite the fact that Nancy had told them to go somewhere different every night, proving once again that the group would completely fall apart without an effective leader such as Nancy or possibly himself. On the way, one of the brats picked up a typewriter out of a pile of junk that had once been part of the furnishings of a home before it had gotten bombed and lugged it all the way despite the fact that it was almost too heavy for him to carry.

Eventually, after they'd all settled in, some opining that Nancy wouldn't be returning and others having faith in her, Nancy turned up with more food and the news that she was leaving because the gas mask creature that had pursued them night after night was actually after her, and that they'd be safe if she left. To prove this point, the typewriter that Jim had been messing around with started typing by itself. Willy turned to look at him in horror and disbelief, having seen him do something like this before back before he had been admitted to Hogwarts and informed that any bouts of "accidental" magic would be dealt with severely. This however wasn't his doing, and he'd indicated as much, causing the boy's eyes to go wide with terror.

He didn't entirely know what had possessed him to follow after Nancy after her departure aside from the possibility of learning her dark secret, which would be good to know if there was any power play for control of the group due to her departure. There was safety in numbers, and having a group of muggles at his beck and call until he returned to Hogwarts would be useful, but there was the fact that the creature was out there, and it was following Nancy. Honestly, if he didn't have whatever dark secret Nancy was hiding, he had no doubt that he'd be able to control the group if it came down to it, even if he had to rule with terror. He had done it before at Wool's, eventually causing children three times his size to tread lightly around him lest he remind them why they shouldn't mess with him. But, follow Nancy he did, telling himself all the while that he was doing so to get her secret so he could gain control of the group and not because it had been one of his bizarre and unknowable whims which may or may not have been sparked by magic but could just as easily have been madness.

He was good at tailing people without being noticed, so he doubted that Nancy even realized that he'd tailed her to the railway station where this mysterious bomb he'd been hearing about was located. He realized his foolishness when Nancy was captured and things began going to hell. But, before he could make a hasty retreat, the man from earlier turned up. The man who exuded power the way the most powerful of wizards who had magic to spare were wont to do, especially when they felt threatened.

Just as it had the first time he'd seen him, something about the man screamed "Look at me! Follow me! Trust me! Everything will be fine if you just trust me!". Rather than leave, which would've been the sensible thing to do under the circumstances, he found himself shadowing the man and his companions. What happened next was almost completely unbelievable, and would've been completely unbelievable if he hadn't been a wizard. When everything was at its bleakest, the strange wizard had pulled a miracle out of nowhere, speaking in near incomprehensible riddles all the while.

"Everybody lives!" the man exclaimed with such a great sense of joy that he couldn't help but feel it himself. "Everybody lives!"

And, if only for that moment, everybody had lived. The strange gas mask creatures that were a result of the plague caused by the unnatural creature that Nancy had called Jamie and revealed was her brother and later her son turned back into humans in the golden light of a spell the likes of which he'd never seen before. A single powerful spell that had been cast without a wand despite the fact that such a wide-area transfiguration should've been impossible, and was impossible according to everything he had read so far as he devoured the Hogwarts library searching for things he could use. Rather than being surrounded by a horde of shuffling monsters intent on turning him into one of them, destroying everything he was, he was now surrounded by a crowd of confused muggles.

In the midst of it all, the stranger stood tall, exuding an infectious sense of joy that he couldn't help but catch.

Look at me, follow me, trust me and everything will be fine. Though he knew that the promise was nothing but a lie, because nothing would be fine unless he made it so, he couldn't help but follow. It wasn't like he had anything else to do...

Edited 7-25-15