9
Tom kicked moodily at the grass. It was wet and windy, and dull, dull, dull. Just like every stupid summer holiday to the beach with his stupid orphanage. Everything was so grey, and bland. The only place greyer and blander than the orphanage's holiday retreat was the orphanage itself, but at least there he was only a walk away from his world. He could be out in the morning as soon as chores were done – not that he did any, not since he was little, since he'd found that he could make people hurt – and stride through the grey, dull, bland streets, full of grey, dull, bland people to the Leaky Cauldron. That was better, interesting, more alive, somehow. But even there, he found, wasn't quite far enough from the muggle world.
No, he was only in his world once he was through the brick wall, in Diagon Ally, where everything was bright, and interesting, and real.
He glared at the sea. All that he could do here was talk to snakes, maybe snatch a few minutes alone to read. He'd been banned from going out of sight to read, because 'he needed to spend time with the other children'. And he couldn't entertain himself the way he'd used to, because Dumbledore, he knew, would be watching. The other children still feared him, and the staff still found him unsettling. He still got his own way, largely, still got left alone, but the knowledge that he could no longer enforce it made him almost afraid.
"Interfering old sod."
