Tis so not the season for this.
You can have anything you want, if you are willing to give up everything for it.
- J.M. Barrie
Christmas morning in Sussex dawned bright and cold, hoarfrost clinging stubbornly to the trees and lacing across the windows. Hermione woke up to the sight of a little house-elf lighting the fire in her bedroom, and drowsily sat up.
She'd cried herself to sleep the night before, and her eyes were aching and red-rimmed. But today – she could face her first Christmas without her family or Harry and Ron. She was ready.
"Sorry Missy Hermione," she squeaked. "Manny did not mean to wake you."
"That's quite alright, Manny. What time is it?"
"Half past six. Can Manny bring you some tea? Or coffee? Hot chocolate?"
"Oh yes - please – a hot chocolate would be amazing. I can come and get it though?"
"No, no Missy. One moment."
She vanished with a small pop and Hermione's eyes spotted the cluster of presents by her bed. Mostly they'd be under the tree, she knew, but anything from her friends would have been brought to her room, and a stocking full of treats from her Uncle and Aunt.
She sat up eagerly, glad as the warmth from the fire washed over her, and piled them onto her bed. Caradoc had told her not to open anything before he and Iris woke up, and that they'd sit and open them together, but the pile was too enticing not to look.
Sophia's writing on a small, beautifully wrapped box was the easiest to identify, and that was Ancha's name, and some of her other Ravenclaw friends had signed little tags or cards. Nothing from Claire, interestingly enough, which made Hermione glad she'd sent one to the other girl.
And – yes! – her heart raced.
His writing.
It was small and thin and wrapped neatly and efficiently in grey tissue paper. Her fingers hovered over it, the other presents temporarily forgotten.
She hadn't thought he'd actually send anything, as dismissive of the holiday celebrations as he was. She felt it, but it gave nothing away, a hard, oblong box. A new quill perhaps?
The house-elf popped into the room with a tray laden not only with a beautiful porcelain pot decorated with weaving dancers, gently steaming at the spout, but a plate of hot buttery crumpets as well.
"Breakfast won't be until ten or eleven o'clock today, Missy Hermione, so I thought you might be hungered."
"Thank you. That's very thoughtful," Hermione said, taking the tray and placing it on the little table by her bed. "Is Caradoc awake yet?"
"Young Master is still asleep," the elf informed Hermione with something of a twinkle in her wide tennis-ball eyes.
When she was gone, Hermione got back into bed and poured hot chocolate out into the matching mug, admiring the dancers as they paraded across the porcelain. Munching slowly on a crumpet, she eyed the little charcoal rectangle. What had he sent her? It was agonising.
Bollocks to it, she thought, and ripped the paper off.
The discared wrapping revealed a box made of what she thought might be walnut. The wood was whorled and glowed warmly in the firelight. She admired it for a moment before tentatively unlatching its little gold hook and lifting the lid.
A tiny golden compass rested against velvet lining. She frowned in surprise. A golden chain was threaded through a small hoop in the top. A necklace.
What? She whispered. The disc had a slender needle that span slowly round and round as she watched, never resting for long as though it were searching for the north. But, she realised, it wasn't a compass after all: there were no directional markings, just a series of tiny skulls finely etched around the edge of its face.
It was beautiful, but quite baffling. She picked up the envelope that had been attached and opened it.
Happy Christmas,
TR
Well, that was helpful.
Curious, but slightly wary, Hermione touched the smooth metal. It glowed softly for a moment, the needle spinning rapidly before settling back into its languid motion. It was hardly bigger than her thumbnail but exquisite. Delicate and interesting and fascinating. She wondered purpose it served, but there was no indication other than the little skulls.
She put it on, and walked to the mirror. It was pretty and unassuming, small enough to pass as an ordinary necklace at first sight, the long chain meaning it could lie hidden behind all but the most revealing of her robes.
She loved it.
He was so frustrating! How utterly like and yet unlike him to surprise her with such an intriguing - and possibly useful - gift but not tell her anything about it. It was probably some sort of ridiculous test.
Her inner voice, the one that she thought of as Harry's voice, had been unusually silent. But now it chided her for recklessly putting on something he'd given her. She ignored it. Whatever else Tom was, he wasn't interested in hurting her. Not now. Not yet. Not here.
She returned to bed and, resentfully eyeing the presents she'd promised not to open, picked up her book to try to pass the time until her cousins awoke, fingers drifting to the compass as she read.
Thankfully, it wasn't long before there was a soft knock on her door.
"I'm awake," she called out.
"Thank Merlin," Iris sighed, opening the door. "Caradoc is snoring his head off – let's go and jump on him. The little ones are all awake - making such a row. I've got too much of a headache to sleep any more - or find them charming." She giggled at this and stole some of Hermione's hot chocolate. "Oh that's good. Merry Christmas!"
"And you! Come on then," Hermione said, pulling on her long velvet dressing gown and embracing her cousin.
They slipped quietly into his room, and then, laughing, jumped on the bed, shaking him awake.
"It's Christmas!" Iris exclaimed. "Come on lazy-bones, wake up."
"Gerroff," he muttered drowsily. "Eh – what – oh!" he sat up, blearily wiping at his eyes, his thick dark curls sticking up dramatically. "Yeah, Happy Christmas. God, my head. What time is it? Manny?"
The elf popped into the room.
"Young Master you is awake!" the elf squeaked.
"Merry Christmas Manny – please bring me a coffee."
"It's eight thirty," Hermione informed him and he groaned.
"Coffee for me too please Manny," Iris chimed in. "Both of you come to my room - and bring your presents!" she added.
"Manny will bring coffee there," the elf said and vanished again.
Hermione suppressed a sigh of irritation on the elf's behalf – she was almost used to having them around now but that didn't make her any more pleased to see another species enslaved. Even well-treated ones, like Buttons and Manny and Jingo. One day, she thought.
"Five more minutes," Caradoc promised Ivy, and rolled back over, eyes drifting closed. Amused, Hermione and left him to drag himself up.
Slightly later than the girls had planned, they reconvened in Iris's room, clambering onto her bed and heaping up their presents.
For a newcomer to 1944, Hermione thought she had a surprisingly good hoard. They took turns opening them, and of course her most lavish presents were from Sophia and Ancha.
From Ancha, who loved clothes, she received a thick cashmere winter cloak, charcoal grey with a soft fur trim, and from Sophia a delicate gold charm bracelet.
Wizarding charm bracelets, unlike their Muggle copies, were actually charmed, and in her note Sophia specified what each little figure carried. The tiny eagle that stretched its wings when Hermione touched it carried a charm for wisdom. A little castle held one for surety, a potions bottle for inventiveness, a white jade flower for friendship, and two runes for happiness and luck. Hermione felt tears prick at her eyes.
"That's so beautiful!" Irish exclaimed, examining it. "I've never seen one like that before. Where's it from?"
She picked up the box and showed the maker's logo to her cousin.
"You might mention this to James around my next birthday, Caradoc."
He laughed and nodded. "Alright, alright."
There were books and chocolates and perfume, and a lovely new quill set from Hector and more chocolates, and she sat giggling and happy with her cousins, playing with the games that had come in their stockings until it was time to get dressed and join the rest of the household.
.
.
Christmas Day passed like this: food and presents and a big walk in the hills and then more food and wine and laughter and roaring fires and Hermione felt, truly, strangely felt, like she was with family. Whether it was some magic from the adoption spell or her own yearning to find a place to belong, she felt more at home with the Dearborns than she had since she'd been torn from her own time. Perhaps, in some ways, more so than even The Burrow. She'd always been welcomed, but had never not been a guest. Here, there were no well-meant but insensitive questions about her Muggle-relatives from Mr Weasley or moments of suspicion from the family's matriarch.
Her two most noteworthy presents, were a Pensieve from Albus, who'd traveled to Alexandria for the holiday, with a note warning her to Use with caution, and, from Cerdic, a car.
A Muggle car, sleek and silver, which in the climate of war must have been so difficult to find. A car. She'd mentioned, off-hand, how useful one would be and he'd bought her one. Just like that.
"You have to take a test with the Muggles," he warned as she opened a box containing a key and a photograph, "but I expect you'll pick it up soon enough. You said you'd like one."
"Father," she said, surprised, hugging him tightly. "Thank you!"
He beamed merrily at her.
"Is it here?" Caradoc asked, excitedly. "Oh, wow. This is amazing."
"No, boy – it's at home. Some officious little man is coming to teach Hermione - ah, tomorrow actually, don't forget - to drive it before the two of you go off gallivanting around Britain in it."
"A Muggle car?" her aunt Hestia asked doubtfully.
"Well, the man I bought it from is a wizard so it's all kitted out with safety charms and so forth. Terribly useful sounding thing, might see how this goes and get another one. Better than a carriage, or that ghastly bus, what?" Cerdic said,
"I think it sounds spectacular," Caradoc said, pouring over the picture. "Look Iris!"
"Oh, it's beautiful. James has one, Aunt Hestia, and it's really quite wonderful. He's quite mad about it. He'll be so jealous when I tell him you've got an SS 100 though Hermione."
"That's the one. The man said it was the best one," Cerdic said, pleased.
"It's the fastest car the world," Iris told him. "Ooh, I can't wait to see it."
"I'm just not sure they're safe," Hestia commented, apparently unaware of the irony coming from a woman who only the day before had gone for a fly around the grounds for fun. Brooms did not have safety charms built-in.
.
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Slightly more than two-hundred-and-fifty miles north west of Cadwgan Dearborn's house in Sussex, Tom Riddle was spending a very different Christmas Day in his empty manor house in Little Hangleton.
The housekeeper-cum-cook his father - not that the man deserved any such title, really - had employed, who lived in a cottage on the grounds, had been slightly disgruntled at Tom's visit for the holidays. She had done little to hide it. He didn't need a Muggle servant, but firing her might have aroused suspicion and so he'd continued paying her menial wages. He suspected she'd been enjoying a life of relative leisure with him away at Hogwarts and would have preferred he remain at a distance. The house was certainly dusty enough, and meals appeared with begrudging indifference to quality.
At least she was gone now. She had prepared enough food for three days and gone to stay with her daughter, whose son (she'd told him several times) was home on leave.
She wasn't wholly useless. The orphanage had never bothered to teach the boys how to cook and he had little desire to learn. But now that there were no other magical people in the village he couldn't even imperio her to be silent. The use of strong magic in such a place might attract Ministry attention. It was deeply irritating, and made him almost regret framing his repellent uncle.
Tom had been tempted to send her away for good, not least because she reminded him of the matron at the orphanage. But she was old and would die soon, and even despite that he had to pretend to be a normal boy who'd inherited an estate before he'd even left school and unfortunately he needed the house for a little while longer.
When she was dead and he had no more use for it he'd leave it to rot. A secret tomb for the ghastly Muggle side of his history.
With nothing else to do, he went out. The manor sat above the village, arrogantly looking out over the little houses, and as Tom left, not bothering to lock the door, he surveyed the frosty landscape, the hills shrouded in a thick mist that had lingered for the past few days rising up behind the house and across the village, enclosing it. To other eyes it might have been beautiful, but Tom was indifferent to the landscape.
He missed the city, sometimes. London was vast and sprawling and he'd been invisible as a child, sneaking out to roam like a gutter rat.
Cheshire was bitterly cold - far colder than was usual for England in December - and Tom wished he could wear his expensive new winter cloak, the first he had owned that was imbued with expensive warming charms, rather than the overcoat that had once been his father's. His breath turned to mist in the morning air before dissipating, as fragile and transient as the lives of those around him.
As lonely and cold and dusty and Muggle as the house was, Tom took a perverse pleasure in using it, in taking advantage of the dead man who'd given nothing to his only offspring.
(The man who'd refused his very existence, who'd tried to turn him away when he'd arrived that summer night, filled with such cringing fury that his Magical lineage had sunk so low that to then be consummately rejected by his Muggle one too –)
.
Unwilling to dwell on that particular memory, Tom turned his thoughts to Hermione as he made his way towards the church, its bells pealing out and echoing through the quiet valley, summoning the parish to worship.
There was little else to do on this inconvenient holiday, when a young man would get strange looks for being alone so he couldn't even research the locket. Every shop was closed and transport extremely limited. The world came to a senseless standstill, and so he followed the pealing bells to church.
Because the Riddle Manor was the largest house in the village it was separated from the church only by the servants' cottages where the gardener (a strange, surly man who glared at Tom from a distance and would not speak to anyone) and the cook/housekeeper lived, the graveyard, and the grounds of the rectory itself.
As he walked, Tom wasn't sure if he was going out of habit, to prevent suspicion in the village until such a time as it wouldn't matter, or because of his conversation with Hermione on the train and the harsh words of a long dead poet that had haunted him since.
Poetry was a form of immorality, after all.
He wondered what she would make of his Christmas. Don't spend too much time on your own, she'd said, with that infuriating kindness that radiated out of her, the damnable compassion that even he couldn't despise as weakness because Hermione Dearborn was anything but weak. Strange, fascinating, suspicious, talented, powerful, kind-hearted, dangerously astute: she was all of those things. And trustworthy somehow. She'd sent him something; it had arrived a few days ago but he'd restrained himself from looking.
Lots of people had sent him parcels, but Tom gave very few presents. Slughorn, of course, best to keep the man sweet, and a few other tactical choices. And her.
He hadn't even been embarrassed when he'd wrapped up the little box by hand. He'd seen the little compass in a tiny shop in the Wizarding district in Manchester, the tag saying it was from the early eighteenth century, and that the little arrow would point to whatever in the vicinity offered the greatest danger to its wearer.
It was interesting and beautiful and sharply attuned to danger - just as she was. Some instinct had told him she'd like it, appreciate it. And Slughorn's gossipy words about her father rang in his mind – that the man had enemies, that there were those who might kidnap Hermione to ransom her.
It had seemed a worthy and apt gift. Even if it was… sentimental.
But then – anything that tied the girl closer to him was good and lead him closer to obtaining her. And if she wore something of his around her neck then wasn't that a sign that she was his?
Tom walked up the pathway and through the open door into the old church, nodding greetings at all the nosey old villagers who liked to gossip about him as he passed them, and took his place in the front pew, his family pew.
He heard the whispers the Riddle boy - grew up in an orphanage – yes that mad woman's son - murdered - the old scandal - inherited unexpectedly last year - and so on. They named him as though they had power to do so, claiming him with the label Tom Riddle.
A doddery and ancient vicar began a dreary service, seemingly intended to remind everyone as much as possible that there was a war on, in case they'd forgotten. After some rising and kneeling and singing, the man took it upon himself to give an enormously long sermon about the christianity of sacrifice – talking about the son of God along with the soldiers abroad, and how all those at home must make sacrifices this Christmastime.
Tom's eyes wandered to the wall of the church where his last name was inscribed on the wall over and over on ancient plaques to his dead relatives. He loathed it and loathed the pride that he couldn't keep away at the sight. He had never been in the church before, though he knew there was a whole section of the graveyard set aside for them too. They'd given their name to the manor and to at least two lanes of houses built primarily for those who laboured on their land. They'd been here for centuries - smug and rich and comfortable and he had been tossed away like a bastard.
Finding them, a year and a half before, had been too much for his temper. It had been the most humiliating moment of his life. Damned and unwanted by both sides of his family. No one could have borne it.
So he'd cleansed the world of their cankerous presence. That had been easy enough: two birds with one stone, two ancient names ended forever. And if the word whispered only in his head - patricide - had haunted him since, a bible verse much appreciated by cruel nuns caring for those who had no parents, If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death, now, here, in the church itself, he felt absolved.
Tom queued for communion with the rest.
Yes, he'd killed his father, with his uncle's wand – though he'd only thought to torture him initially. His father, whose last words had been, You're no son of mine - you're a disgusting freak just like her. Tom had read the man's mind beforehand, seen the whole bare hideous truth of his conception.
He accepted the wafer and wine and blessing.
And yes, he'd killed the old man and woman – his grandparents, he supposed – who'd witnessed it. How pathetic that the man of forty still lived with them, and yet hadn't it been fortunate that he'd been home on leave from his cushy job safely away from the front that particular evening.
He went back to his lonely pew.
Afterwards, Tom had disillusioned himself and slipped back down the hill in the darkness to bespell his uncle into believing he had killed them.
It had not been until later, when his rage had simmered down, stopped burning so white-hot it felt like ice instead of heat, just as he'd turned to leave the village, that he'd thought of it.
And so back up the hill he'd gone, rushing now, because he'd realised that he didn't have to be homeless any more. Like all the orphans, he'd been unceremoniously booted out of the system at sixteen. He'd had nowhere to go that summer, or he wouldn't have bothered finding his family, not with an ancestor like his – not even with the irrepressible child's dream of what they might be.
No, the gossip had told him what to expect from the Gaunts, but he'd been... in need of a roof. If only Dippet had let him stay at Hogwarts, he'd never have had to kill the Riddles. But that was beside the point now.
The house was his by blood anyway and his sharp orphan's instincts had taken him back over the fields and into the house, stepping around the undiscovered bodies, to find letters from the Riddle's lawyer. Then he'd slipped away again, quickly, traveled miles to Chester to find the office, and altered the will so that everything – the manor, the attached farms, the tenanted cottages, the money – everything came to him. He'd had to wait, hidden, to make sure the old lawyer had believed it himself, and then find a way back to London without using magic.
The stone wall of the old Norman church looked bleak in the cold winter light, and Tom rose with the rest of the congregation to sing the last hymn.
Hail the heav'n born Prince of Peace! Hail the Son of Righteousness, Light and life to all he brings. He kept his face carefully pious.
Tom had killed to avenge his rejection, his mother's rejection - and oh, how hideous the memories had been in the other Tom Riddle's mind. His pathetic, embarrassing, desperate mother, weak and ugly, and driven to madness by love of all things. But the benefits had been astronomical.
He'd gone from being a penniless orphan with no home to being a relatively wealthy landowner, albeit a Muggle one. He had little interest in money for its own sake, especially the muggle kind, but money was a form of power and Tom – Tom liked power.
Besides, he knew that money was money and food was food: it wasn't preferable, certainly, to have such Muggle roots but it was better than nothing. Preferable would have been the Gaunts maintaining their former glory, would be being an heir to a worthy house not a madman in a hovel. Preferable had many forms and the least of them was this.
But it would do, for now, while he was a student, until he'd tracked down the locket that was his by rights, the last relic of Salazar Slytherin. His fingers itched against the hymn book as he thought of it.
To achieve all of that from one night's work – and to make a Horcrux – well, it was just a shame he couldn't boast about it really. It was so impressive.
(He refused to remember the sting of humiliation, the sick feeling when even his pathetic Muggle relations hadn't wanted him, to learn that his mother had resorted to magic to breed, his own desperate need for a home.
Worse still, and never to be thought of, was the moment of hope when his uncle had said you look mighty like that Muggle and he'd thought any father is better than no father. No he wouldn't recall that in any retelling, not even to himself any more. It had been a cleansing, well-deserved justice handed out to a Muggle who'd dared to distain magic instead of giving it its rightful reverence. A Muggle who'd left his mother, thinking himself above her, his mother whose blood was pure, who might have been ugly and pathetic, who might have soiled herself, but who had been worthy of respect from that man nonetheless.)
Staring back at the plaque to some Muggle ancestor, as the last prayers wafted past his unhearing ears, Tom thrilled in the knowledge that one day he would cast off that name.
That one day he would simply be Voldemort, so powerful that even wizards would fear to name him. Because names were power, and history and he –
He wanted to break free of all of his own history, Gaunt and Riddle alike.
.
.
When the interminable service finally ended, on a note of the weakest Christmas cheer even Tom could imagine – and Christmas was never a particularly wonderful time to be an orphan – he spent a few minutes by the door charming the old women of the village.
It never hurt to advance your approval rating in any circumstances, and while he didn't think anyone had ever connected him with the murders, or even knew he'd been to the village before he'd inherited the unfortunate property, one could never be too careful.
"Thank you, and to you Mrs Grimsby," he said, forcing a smile to an old woman who he'd met before while walking in the village the previous summer. She was a uniquely nosy specimen and, he suspected, the epicentre of the village gossip.
"How was your term at school, dear?"
"Oh very good, thank you. Still top of the class. Gosh I think I had better get back to the house – the turkey will be burning! Have a wonderful holiday."
(Five people had tried to take him home for lunch, it was unbearable.)
As he hurried away from the stifling questions and deeply unwelcome curiosity, he could hear her telling her friend Margaret how much nicer he was than his father and he –
He smiled.
One day they might learn that was very far from the case.
One day, when he was free to be fully himself.
But for now, village duty done, he could go home and let himself open that parcel from h e r.
Tom ate the cold chicken Mrs Jeffery had left and poured himself a glass of wine. Good wine, wine he supposed his Riddle grandfather had bought and laid down years ago, wine he hadn't known was good but he'd been researching because that sort of thing mattered to people and even pureblood wizards drank Muggle wine (unknowingly, or at least uncaringly). He opened his presents sitting in the smallest sitting room of the house, the one Mrs Jeffrey wasn't allowed into, piled with his magic books and the fire dancing, the only room in this godforsaken house that felt like home.
There was the usual small collection of duty gifts from current and former Slytherins, most of them to keep him sweet. Tickets to this and that, although why anyone though he'd be interested in hippogriff racing escaped him, expensive but essentially useless trinkets – usually with snakes on -, and books of Dark Magic that no one sold in shops. A card from Mrs Cole wishing him well, which he threw on the fire, an enormous box of fancy candied fruits from Slughorn that he idly dug into, and, interestingly enough, tickets to the top box of the Quidditch World Cup the following summer from Penelope Greengrass.
He wondered who she'd had to charm to get those, and considered again what a useful addition she'd be to his little band of dedicated followers. It wasn't for any interest in Quidditch, because she knew he didn't care much about it as long as Slytherin won. The brutishness of the Quidditch team when they were not victorious, their legendary punishments to the member voted to have let them down, turned even his stomach. Not for the violence, but for the pointlessness of it.
No, Greengrass was stating very clearly to him I can elevate your status. It was a networking opportunity, a chance to be seen by the right sort of people, a foot through a door he'd been fighting against having shut in his face for seven years.
And yet, that sort of social climbing was so boring and ordinary. He tossed them down, frowning. Being conventionally successful was so limiting. One had to conform to rules of society and etiquette and the Wizarding world's equivalents of going to church and smiling at Mrs Grimsby and telling her about his term at school.
It was the same power attainable to anyone with the right name – and he wanted to go far, far beyond that.
Finally, he opened Hermione Dearborn's present. Her owl had delivered the parcel, wrapped in brown paper, with a note saying she was going to stay with her family and was sending it early, but to keep it until today. Even on paper, she could sound bossy.
There was more inside than he'd expected. First, a shrunken tin that enlarged in his hands and turned heavier (her spell-work really was impressive, even to him). When he pulled the lid off he saw a sticky delicious looking loaf shaped cake. The smell of it suddenly his nostrils and he realised she'd put a statis spell over it, that had dissolved with the featherweight charm and shrinking spell. Clever witch. It smelled like apples and cinnamon and something nutty and had he not been impatient to see what else was in the parcel he'd have immediately eaten some. Living in the Muggle world over Christmas, with its pinched wartime rationing, had reminded him all too much of the hideous orphanage food.
Next was a poinsettia, also bursting from miniature to full size as he picked it up, a small note tucked into the edge of the pot in her neat, flowing handwriting: I assumed your house needed cheering up.
It was followed by a ridiculous card with a flying Hippogriff on the front pulling a sleigh full of presents. He snorted with laughter when he opened it and it began to sing loud carols.
She was, under her sophisticated exterior, actually rather funny. No one else – no one ever – had teased him as she was beginning to. And anyone else would have been tortured for it, but with her it was different.
Another tin revealed mince pies and it occurred to him that she might have made them herself. The thought of her baking for him made his stomach lurch with a strange and completely alien emotion.
And then at the bottom, beautifully wrapped in velvety dark-red paper with a ribbon tied in an obnoxiously perfect golden bow, a piece of parchment tucked into it, was his present.
He unwrapped it, revealing the battered brown leather cover. The title had worn away and for a moment he was disappointed that she'd bought him a book like everyone else. Until he saw the spine. It was a Founders book – one of the rarest, one he'd only seen mention of and never found and she'd – how had she known?
He stared at it, gobsmacked. It was the only present he'd ever received that he'd wanted. The urge to see her stole up through his body, pinching at the glow that had spread when he'd opened her parcel. Tom knew all about missing people who didn't exist, missing the mythological father he'd created in his mind as an eleven year old, missing the dead mother he'd imagined as a smaller boy, but he'd never missed anyone real before.
And as he stared at her merry, teasing little note, the note that said she wouldn't bother wishing him a Merry Christmas, because she knew he didn't really celebrate it, but that she'd seen the book and thought of him anyway, even the fire warming the smaller sitting room he used as a library seemed cold in comparison.
.
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So I actually think he'd have had to leave the orphanage at 14 (assuming it wasn't evacuated because of the blitz) but as JKR breezed past it I've gone with the modern age in the UK (16).
Thank you all - I love you!