spells

The mood at the table was sombre. Well, at least it was for Tom. He hoped it was for everyone else as well, all the other Slytherins who were gossiping with their friends and failing to hide their disgust and laughter from him. His fist tightened around his fork, now clamping down on it so hard that he half-expected it to snap right there in his hand.

Apparently, even though Avery had wanted him to come down to breakfast, he hadn't wanted Tom to sit with him. The only empty spot for him had been at the very end of the table, right by the teachers. In any other situation, he would have been irritated to have to sit so close to the professors, but he suspected that their close proximity to him was the only thing stopping his housemates from rounding on him.

He didn't know what it was, but Hogwarts seemed less magical this morning than it did at the sorting last night. The colours were more muted and dulled, the impressive stone walls had visible cracks and the magical ceiling was lacklustre. He must have been viewing everything through rose-tinted glasses last night, holding onto some feeble hope that he would find somewhere he belonged. No, that was the foolish hope of idiots, dreamers, and optimists. This was the real world – the world of prejudice and scorns and wobbly benches.

He stubbornly stabbed at his scrambled egg, not hungry in the slightest, and moved it around on his plate in boredom. The metal fork grated and screeched against the ceramic, but Tom didn't care. He felt like screeching too.

Grey eyes flickered up between dark lashes to observe the professors. Only a few of them were there, and Tom supposed that some must have eaten earlier or didn't eat with the students at all. A flash of caerulean blue snagged his gaze and he saw the professor, Dumbledore, draped in a star-patterned robe and chatting merrily with some witch. Tom scowled. Why was everyone do damn joyous? Frankly, it was sickening.

His fork clattered onto his plate and he stood, not intending to spend another minute in the Great Hall. Avery would just have to get over it.

Unfortunately for Tom, in order to get to the back of the hall where the exit was, he had to walk past the entirety of the Slytherin table, and his housemates had no desire to leave him alone. He heard the jeers – 'mudblood' hissed under their breath, lips curling as if they smelt something rotten and malicious smiles painted on some of the more sadistic older teens. Tom shuddered to postulate on what they were thinking, or worse, planning.

Some of the less original students stuck out their feet in hopes that Tom would trip over them, but Tom was all too used to such ways from his time at the orphanage, and snuck around them nimbly. However, he was less prepared for the jinxes some of the more audacious students cast his way. He'd ducked a few, reacting out of shock, but had been hit by a fair few as well. He was wiser than to stay and retaliate, knowing that he was outrageously outnumbered and wouldn't want to be expelled, and so by the time he had left the Great Hall, his hair was fluorescent pink and he was slowly losing sensation in his legs, heels awkwardly scuffling along the floor.

His exit was accompanied by quiet chuckles from the snake house, and indifference from the others. Everyone hated Slytherin, and everyone in Slytherin hated Tom. He couldn't win.

"Need any help?"

A Hufflepuff, around third to fourth year was looking down at him with pity, her friends trying to pull her away and eyeing Tom was disdain. Tom's first reaction was to dismiss her, return her friends' sneers and reply that he didn't need any help. That thought however was shoved to the side – he did need help, he didn't know the counters to these spells and he didn't want to wait for them to wear off. Even if it did mean that he had to rely on someone else's help.

God, he would now owe two people.

He nodded stiffly, answering before he could think more on his decision, ignoring the sensation of his pride being trampled on and intimately aware of his shaking knees as his legs continues to weaken. The girl smiled, dark black curls tossing around her head as she walked closer to him, drawing a honey-coloured wand from her bag. Tom was unnaturally still as she pointed it at him, muscles tense and ready for flight, magic rearing at his fingertips and the sensation of butterflies in his stomach.

"Finite Incantatem," she intoned, her wand flicking and moving in simple motions. Tom instantly felt his legs strengthen and he stood straighter, and at the same time he felt his hair going static, as if charged. He clutched a loose curl of hair and brought it in front of his eyes, and sighed in relief when it was back to a healthy brown.

"Thank you," Tom said warily, waiting for the demands that would follow. He didn't like the situation of being in another's debt, but he couldn't avoid the fact that he now owed people – to go back on his word would mean tarnishing his already diminished reputation.

"You're welcome, have a good day now!" The Hufflepuff called, walking off with her friends.

"Wait!"

They turned around, looking at him oddly. Tom floundered.

"What do you want? In return, I mean, for helping me with this…"

He pointed to his newly de-spelled hair.

The girl's face softened.

"I don't want anything in return. Sometimes it's just nice to help someone out without expecting a reward, you know?"

Tom didn't know, but he nodded anyway, staring at the space where the gaggle of girls had been even after they left. They had been so different to the Slytherins…kinder, nicer. But they were nothing like him – he was a Slytherin, no matter what Orion hinted, and he couldn't fathom going out of his way to help someone he didn't know. Hell, he wouldn't help someone he did know without getting something out of it in return.

Nagini didn't count, because she was helping him. They had come to an understanding, a trade of sorts. Come to mention it, Tom still owed her… and now he was at Hogwarts, it was the perfect opportunity for Tom to start looking up some information on her master – and hopefully, lack of.

The answer to all his current problems seemed to lie in the library.

Problem: he didn't know where it was.

There was nothing for it but to wander around and hope for the best – do some exploring and get a vague sense of the castle at the same time.

Tom chose a corridor that led away from the Great Hall and was in the opposite direction to the Slytherin dungeons – he didn't want to run into any of his housemates. Not when he hadn't yet properly developed his arsenal. He walked along beside the walls, leaving less angles for a surprise attack, eyes peeled and darting in both directions down the corridor – out of the safety of the professors' close gaze, he knew that his housemates would be less hesitant to do worse than pink hair.

He masked his footsteps by stepping lightly on his toes – not tiptoeing, but not letting the full weight of his heels touch the ground. He supposed that he must look odd – sneaking around the school like he was up to no good, but Tom knew that his odd actions were fully justified – and in the past, his paranoia had paid off greatly. Just ask Billy's rabbit – they had never managed to pin its sudden disappearance on him, or more appropriately, Nagini.

A crowd of Ravenclaws passed him by, but either didn't care for him or were to absorbed in their discussion on runic arrays to give him any more than a passing glance. Tom made a note to look up runic arrays in the library as well – it sounded interesting.

The corridors were mostly desolate with the majority of the school at breakfast or in their common rooms, making the most of the free day, and so only a few students ambled past him by as he continued through the halls, eventually finding himself in front of a grand staircase. With nothing else for it, and the knowledge that the Slytherin common room was down and not up, he made his way up the staircase. He was halfway up the second staircase when it shifted under his feet, stones grinding against each other in a practiced motion, and he nervously held onto a bannister as the stairs positioned themselves in another direction.

Half of him was in sheer awe at the spectacle, the other half of him wanted to get off the staircase before it decided to chuck him off. Still holding onto the bannister with one supporting hand, he walked up the rest of the steps and pushed against a heavy oak door, the wood creaking as it swung open. The second floor's corridor was quiet, and he started to wander down, eyes out for indications of a library. He wished that the school had thought to give students a map of the school, and not simply leave them to their own devices. What if he got lost on his way to class? What if he couldn't find his class? It wasn't as if anyone would help him.

Tom sat down in a window's alcove, the carved stone was cold but left him largely hidden from the rest of the corridor in case anyone decided to stroll past. He leaned his head against the stone, peering out the window at the school's grounds. In the distance he could see a forest – a forbidden forest, if the headmaster's speech last night had been anything to go by, and he wondered what sort of things might be lurking in its depths to make it so dangerous.

He hadn't really thought about it before, but if magic was real, then surely there might be magical creatures as well? He'd guessed for some time that Nagini was not an ordinary snake, for no normal snake would eat as often as she did or grow to be so massive. In addition, her colouring, shape, and characteristics did not match the specifications of any snake species he knew – and she was far more intelligent than the rest. So, if his hypothesis were true and Nagini was some magical variety, then did other animals have magical counterparts?

Were there magical horses that could run for days on end, magical fish that could breathe out of water, magical birds that could grow to be ten feet tall? No, he was being ridiculous. It would be obvious if there were – they would not be able to hide anything like that from the muggles. The muggles – he liked the sound of that; it showed that he was different from them. They must be a different species, even. Tom swore that he could never go back to that sort of life, a life where he was nobody. Here, he had the potential to become somebody, somebody other people couldn't help but look up to and admire, worship, fear.

But he needed to prove himself.

He leaned closer to the window, head brushing against the cold glass and he squinted his eyes at the forest. Maybe there were real magical creatures, the ones in the fairy tales that the girls at the orphanage used to read. Maybe there were fairies and unicorns, dragons and griffins, but maybe there were hags, werewolves, vampires and goblins?

Tom realised abruptly how little he knew about the world he had found himself in. At this rate, he'd be spending the whole of his first year in the library.

If he could find it, that is.

Tom went back out into the corridor, only the fogged panes of glass showing that someone had been in that alcove. He'd have to ask someone – maybe another Hufflepuff who wouldn't ask for anything in return – he certainly would not want to ask a Slytherin. In fact…yes, there were alcoves all along the corridor, and he could slip into any one of them if he spotted a green and silver tie.

He almost wanted to laugh at how weak he was in this world, how ironic it was that he was stuck at the bottom of the food chain, so used to being the apex predator that he had forgotten how to be prey. What was the point of him being here? Would his life really be so much better, the outcast of society and the punchline of all jokes? He knew the answer – magic. Magic was why he had come here. But that fierce rebuttal against leaving Hogwarts and never returning was growing weaker by the second, twisting into something bitter and desperate.

Was this it? Was he doomed to be desperately reliant on the help of the odd kind Hufflepuff, and cursed to avoid his fellow housemates for seven years in the fear that they would attack the second he let his guard down?

No – he could not live like this, he was better than this. He was better than all of them. He, who could cast wandless and wordless magic before starting Hogwarts – who could perform feats they couldn't comprehend before he even knew of wands.

Tom deflated, his steps slowing from the rapid tempo he had worked himself up towards. That could all wait for later, he'd plan once he had negotiated himself a better position on the playing field, when he finally stood a chance against his peers. Against Cygnus, Avery, Nott, and Orion. If they weren't with him, then they were against him – soon they'd be begging on their knees, crawling towards him with fear in their eyes and he'd laugh…

"Excuse me, do you know where the library is?" Tom asked, eyes wide and hopeful, looking up pleadingly at a Gryffindor youth who had just appeared around the corridor's bend. The red-haired teenager scratched his neck, looking down at Tom bewilderedly.

"Ummm, yeah…" The boy mumbled, getting over the fact that a Slytherin first year was asking him for help.

"It's on the third floor, so just go up the stairs and you'll get there."

Tom thanked the teen, before walking determinedly back to that wretched staircase, leaving a bemused teenager in his wake. Plans were starting to be put into motion, raw ideas forming in his head and his magic cackled alongside him. In the empty corridor, Tom smiled, the satisfied smirk hinting of events to come, and a necessary change in the Slytherin hierarchy.

Preferably, with him on top.