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Tom Riddle
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The headmaster stood slowly, and crossed the room back to the mirrored cupboard that had contained the pensieve. With care, he selected several vials; each filled with silvery memory.
Harry watched him with an observant eye. The man had changed since the previous year. The youthful energy and grace that had previously been instilled in him had fled with the return of Voldemort and the loss of his magic, and he moved as every bit of his one hundred and fifty-seven years. The wisdom and care remained, but it was tempered with a surrounding weariness, and it seemed to Harry that the man had become tired of living. He had lived through two wars, and was entering his third, and Harry wondered how long he was going to be able to carry on, especially since his magical drain.
He also wondered whether the weariness was entirely genuine.
"I have been meaning to show you these for a long while," Dumbledore said quietly, "and I hope you can forgive me for the delay, even if you can forgive me for little else."
With a sigh he replaced the memory of the Prophecy in his mind, and uncorked the bottle. The silvery substance slipped, insubstantial, from the vial and pooled in the bottom of the basin.
"After you," Dumbledore offered. Raising a brow, Harry dipped face first into the pensieve.
The scene that resolved itself before him was of a pleasant little country lane in what looked to be the height of summer. A light, ghostly breeze ruffled him, and Harry stared curiously at the figure that they were obviously following. He was short and plump with a slight balding patch on the top of his head, and he was clothed in rather oddly cut plum robes, the stitch around the collar identifying him as the head of his house and the orange as having a low ranking position in the Ministry. Not for the first time, Harry thought that the Wizarding obsession with identification and wearing positions like a badge of honour on their robes made for rather bad colour clashes.
The man was bustling along in a strange rolling gait that seemed to balance speed with his continuing vertical alignment, and Harry could instantly sense that this was not a man who had not been picked for team sports in school.
"Charles Ogden," Dumbledore said, and Harry turned to find him walking gently behind. "Twin brother to Bob Ogden, who had at the time recently been promoted ahead of him. He worked in the Department of Muggle Relations closely with his brother on Muggle – Magical co-operation and secrecy."
Harry frowned and increased his pace. He could see a small village nestled in the valley below, appearing gradually as they descended. Harry looked on it, picking out the small roads, and on a hill above a large manor that sent an inexplicable shiver down his spine. However, it appeared that Charles Ogden was not aiming for the little village, and instead he paused at a junction to peer at a scrap of paper before turning from the main lane.
As he continued on, the scene became progressively darker for thick trees grew around the path in such a fashion that it began to meander and become deeply overgrown. The bright sunlight resolved itself into dappled shade as the heat of the day fell into a cool gloom, and Harry noticed with disgust that there was a snake nailed to one of the trees that they passed.
The three of them emerged in a small clearing in the trees, and through the shade it took Harry a moment to pick out the house from among the boughs, for the wood that it was made of blended so well into the bark of the trees that it appeared to have grown from them rather than to have been constructed. But then again, in the magical world anything was possible. Thick moss and weeds adorned the outside, and the loose roof tiles were half hidden beneath a thick layer of fallen leaves and decaying mulch from which plants were growing. The house itself was surrounded by stinging nettles, saplings and crawling plants, so that the clearing was barely a clearing at all, being only defined by the lack of taller trees. With a sickening jolt in his stomach, Harry noticed that another snake had been nailed to the door, the length of metal hammered through its skull.
Apparently Ogden was rather taken aback by the appearance of the place too, because he paused at the fringe of vegetation and appeared to be debating turning back.
As he started slowly forwards, Harry's ears caught a gentle sound on the wind, one that Ogden appeared to be oblivious too. Moving forwards, Harry was alarmed to spot a man dressed in rags kneeling in the vegetation, curling a snake through his hands and crooning. His hair was matted together in a thick mass, and his face was filthy. He, like the house, appeared to have grown out of the undergrowth, and as such blended in imperceptibly. Round his neck hung another dead snake, and Harry caught what he was saying with a little thrill of horror.
'Hissy hissy, little snakey,
Slither on the floor,
You be good to Morfin
Or he'll nail you to the door.'
Now Harry wasn't particularly fond of snakes, not after the Chamber incident, but he had always felt a sense of compassion when it came to animals – a feeling that did not stretch so well onto people, particularly when they were of this calibre.
Apparently Ogden had just noticed him too, because he jumped back in sudden alarm as the man rose from his nest among the nettles, watching the wizard with odd, angular dark eyes.
'Looky, looky little snakey,
A man has come to play,
You've been good to Morfin,
So he'll let you go today.'
"Y-you must be Morfin then," Ogden began, and then seemed to draw some confidence into himself. "I am from the Department of Muggle Relations in the Ministry of Magic, and I'm here to discuss suspicions of-"
"You're not welcome here," Morfin hissed, and Harry would have laughed at the expression on Ogden's face were the situation less threatening. After all, Morfin was heading towards him with the slow assurance of one used to being the hunter, holding a bloody knife in one hand after having let the snake go.
"Sorry? I…I'm not sure I quite caught that," Ogden stuttered.
"You are not welcome here," Morfin hissed, and Harry noticed the malice that had crept in behind it this time.
"I'm sorry, but you'll have to speak English," Ogden said a little more firmly. Morfin twisted the knife on the tip of his finger with a broad grin, showing a wide set of yellowed teeth, before making a sudden, wild slash at the man.
Ogden yelped loudly and stumbled backwards, landing with a loud thump on the ground, but Harry wasn't paying attention to him anymore. As Morfin had lunged forwards, his loose, stained shirt had swung sideways revealing a heavy gold pendant hung around his neck, emblazoned with a curling serpentine 'S'. It only flashed for a moment, but it caught and snagged in Harry's mind. The sound of Ogden's yell appeared to alert whoever was in the house, for a man came barrelling out, running in a strange, swinging gait. His hair was greying towards the temples, and his face was lined in such a way that it crinkled around the current snarl he was wearing, obviously ingrained from frequent use.
Morfin watched him approach with a malicious grin, and the older man stopped before Ogden. Harry watched as his eyes flicked to the collar and cuffs of the robe before returning to his face.
"From the Ministry, are you?" he growled out.
Ogden stood, looking very disgruntled and rather unnerved, brushing down his robes and puffing up in a pompous manner rather reminiscent of Percy. "Yes, I am, and your son has just attempted an assault on Ministry personal on top of his previous charges."
The man's eyes narrowed. "Charges, what charges?"
Ogden huffed. "It has come to our attention that he has recently placed a jinx on a Muggle-"
"You're going to try and do something because he hexed some filthy Muggle now, are you?" he leered. "Muggle got what was coming to him, deserved it, you hear?"
Ogden looked rather taken aback at this. "I can assure you that it is against the law-"
"'It is against the law,'" the man mimicked in a nasal, whining voice before snorting. "What are you going to do about it, you and your Ministry?" He paused and eyed him carefully. "You pureblood?"
"T-that has nothing to do with anything!" Ogden spluttered, and Harry felt that he might have had a little more respect for the man if he didn't look so mortally afraid of the two before him. "I am afraid that he has been summoned-"
"Summoned!" the man snarled. "Summoned like some petty little mudblood. We're pureblood, through and through. See this?" he said waving his grimy hand before the official, a large black and gold ring resting on his middle finger. "This has been in my family for generations, been offered a lot for this – more than you'll ever end up seeing in your lifetime, mudblood."
"Why-I-Sir! This is outrageous!" Ogden choked out, inflating his chest self-importantly. However, he was quick to back away when Morfin made a threatening gesture with his short knife.
"Outrageous is it?" the man growled, before stomping back into the house. Ogden appeared quite confused by this, but when he made to follow Morfin jabbed the knife at him again.
A moment later the man emerged dragging a pale, plain looking girl by the wrist. She was a little cleaner than the other two, but her dirty blonde hair was still matted and tangled, and she seemed possibly the most defeated-looking person Harry had ever seen. She hung her head, seemingly trying to will herself to fade into her stained grey dress.
"See this?" the man said, grabbing a gold chain from around her neck and yanking her forwards by it. "This is Slytherin's locket! Salazar Slytherin! We're descended direct from him, Salazar Slytherin himself!" he yelled, and Ogden looked alarmed at the intensity, whilst Harry was more worried about the gasping girl at the end of the gold chain.
As he let her go, Harry found his eyes focusing on the locket she was too busy gasping to tuck back under the neckline of her dress. The same symbol rose across the front, the 'S' shape. He would have to ask Salazar about that. If there were two ancestral heirlooms floating around the place then he'd probably want to know about it. It wasn't like Slytherin to let things go missing.
"This is my daughter, Merope," the man added grudgingly. Ogden seemed to take a minute to compose himself before speaking.
"Be that as it may, your lineage has nothing to do with the charges."
"Charges!" the man spat. "Charges! The man got what was coming to him, didn't he?"
Morfin cackled at this, fingering the dead snake around his neck.
"He used magic in front of a Muggle Mr Gaunt," Ogden said patiently, falling back on an official persona. "And that is against the law. He will have to attend a hearing on the 5th-"
"A hearing?" Mr Gaunt said, eyes narrowing. He opened his mouth to say more, but the noise of light clip-clopping came from down the path, and sophisticated voices rose over the trees.
"-just tear the nasty little hovel down Tom?" said a woman's voice. A man laughed.
"Oh, I'd like to Cecelia, but my father doesn't own the property. Dirty little beggars the lot of them. If it was up to me then they'd already be gone, but you know father," he said, and a patronising masculine laugh followed.
Morfin's odd eyes had narrowed and he made to start forwards, raising the knife, but Mr Gaunt held out a hand.
"Stay put Morfin," he hissed, while Ogden looked on unnerved.
"Oh my goodness! Is that a snake nailed to that tree?" the woman called out, voice shrill with alarm.
"I told you, heathens all of them!" the man exclaimed, still sounding amused. "Don't look darling!"
"Darling," Morfin whispered in parseltongue, looking intently at his sister, who had gone very white. "Called her 'darling'. Wouldn't you like that? Doesn't look like you have a chance."
Morfin cracked into a broad grin as Mr Gaunt whipped around. "What was that?" he said, seemingly forgetting his earlier argument with Ogden, who stood uncomfortably at the sidelines, obviously stumped by the language barrier.
"She likes looking at him. Always stopping when he passes, leaning out the window when he's coming back. I caught her at it yesterday," Morfin cackled with malicious glee. "Staring at him from the trees as he went past on the horses."
"Is that true?" Mr Gaunt hissed, face breaking into an ugly grimace. "My daughter, watching the dirty veins pass. Perhaps you want go with him, abandon your heritage and turn into a filthy blood traitor slut!" he said, voice rising to a yell.
"No," Merope whispered. "No, no, no," she trailed off, wide-eyed.
Morfin laughed again, muttering "likes watching her," under his breath. In the distance the sound of the horses and light conversation faded as they continued on. Mr Gaunt seemed to lose whatever shred of habit that had allowed him to restrain himself, and he leapt at the girl grabbing her shoulders and shaking her.
"Blood traitor! Filth! Ugly little Squib!" he shouted.
Harry restrained the urge to try and intervene - always a problem when he witnessed memories. Knowing that he could simply watch and nothing more. As it was, he was relieved to see that when Mr Gaunt's shaking moved beyond the realms of what might be considered marginally acceptable, Ogden drew his wand and cast an Expelliaramus that knocked the man away from his daughter with an animalistic snarl.
Morfin immediately stopped cackling and flipped the knife into a downward hold that was no longer so playful. He wasn't about to toy with Ogden anymore, and the man sensibly fled.
Harry was tempted to remain and see what became of Merope, but he found himself dragged along with Ogden, Dumbledore following serenely behind. As they reached the road, emerging into the sunshine as if out of some terrible dream, he saw that Ogden had run into the horses and promptly fallen onto his rather protuberant behind for the second time that day.
Looking up, he gasped. Staring down at the Ministry official with no small amount of disdain was an almost picture perfect replica of Tom Marvolo Riddle. The senior version even wore the slightly raised eyebrow and careless disregard he had noted on his son. How he could look so similar to the man when he had never even had a conversation with him was beyond comprehension.
"It is time to leave our friend, I am afraid," Dumbledore said from behind him.
Harry cast one last glance at the stuttering buffoon at their feet and withdrew himself from the memory.
Returning to his chair, he sat with a sigh, contemplating what he had seen. It was becoming increasingly obvious from what he had seen and what Voldemort himself had told him, that the people he had just witnessed were to become his family.
"So Merope was his mother," he murmured.
"Indeed," Dumbledore agreed, watching him closely. "Charles Ogden returned soon after we left with a small squad of Aurors to assist him. Morfin naturally resisted attack, but his father Marvolo assaulted and killed one of the Aurors before he could be captured. In the trial Morfin was easily sentenced for two years in Azkaban given his history of offences against Muggles, but Marvolo was sentenced to five for the murder of the Auror."
"I suspect that with her father and brother gone, Merope saw her chance to pursue her affections for Tom Riddle, and they were happily married within months. It was quite the town scandal for the esteemed son of a lord to run away with the daughter of a beggar, but not a year later he returned and was heard to say that he had been 'hoodwinked' and 'deceived'."
Harry frowned. "She let him go?"
Dumbledore looked a little sad at this. "I suspect that she believed after awhile that the man she loved had come to feel the same, and whether she was using love potions or the Imperius curse, she decided to put an end to it. The town at the time seemed to feel that she had tricked him into thinking her pregnant."
Harry snorted. "Well, when he actually left her she must have been. What happened then?"
"They had been staying in a London house owned by Riddle, and when he left her she was abandoned to the streets penniless and pregnant with his child." Dumbledore shook his head regretfully, and Harry had to prevent his lip from curling in disdain. "She sold Slytherin's locket, the prized heirloom of the Gaunt's that her father valued as much as a third child, and her life ended in a small orphanage owned by one Mrs Cole."
"Who did she sell it to?" Harry asked.
Dumbledore gave him a strange look, and Harry wondered whether he'd sounded too interested.
"I believe she sold it to someone along Knockturn Alley, although I'm not sure who."
Dumbledore raised another vial and Harry inclined his head to acknowledge it. Transferring the previous memory to the empty vial, he upended the new memory in the basin. Not waiting for an invitation this time, Harry entered the memory.
When the swirling stopped, he saw that he was in a vaguely familiar part of London. Indeed, although the surroundings were dark and rain-soaked Harry picked out the area as one that he had seen as Petunia and the Dursleys drove past in the car on their way into town.
Turning, he saw Dumbledore and promptly attempted to repress a snort of amusement. The man was wearing a lurid plum suit with little glittery gold buttons in the shape of stars. He was younger here, his face less lined and his hair still a bright auburn, but he looked every bit as eccentric and dandy-ish as he did later in life. As he was going among Muggles it seemed that he had foregone a rain charm, and the water sluiced down his face, dripping in streams from his hair.
"Ah," Dumbledore sighed from beside him, eyeing the suit regretfully. "It was never the same again. The rain marked the velvet, you see."
Harry let out a light chuckle and followed the headmaster's younger counterpart towards a reasonably large building fronted by a tall iron gate. Dumbledore promptly pushed it open with a whisper and a gesture, the lock undoing from the other side. Walking towards the grey stone walls, he rapped sharply on the door.
A moment later a pale, dirty-haired girl wearing an apron opened it and squinted suspiciously at him.
"Wha' d'you want?" she asked gruffly.
"I am here to see Mrs. Cole," Dumbledore said mildly, eyes twinkling.
"The vis'ting hours are closed now. You should 'ave come earlier," she said, still peering round the half-open door.
"I assure you, Mrs. Cole suggested that I come at this time," he said. "It would also be quite inappropriate to discuss such a matter in the rain."
Harry caught the subtle glance and the momentary glazed expression before she opened the door a little wider.
"Well, if you say so," she said warily, before prodding a bitten finger into his chest. "But don't cause no trouble now, or we'll call in the coppers."
Dumbledore's eyes danced merrily. "Have no worries child, I'm not here to cause trouble."
He stepped over the threshold, graciously ignoring the maid still holding it half-open, obviously quite unwilling to let him into the house. He emerged on a small entrance hall of sorts, with a flight of stairs leading upwards, and two doors – one beneath the staircase and another to the left. The floor was generally clean, but it had the look of reluctant sweeping, for whilst the main area was relatively dust free the stairs and the skirting board were covered in a thick layer that belied the fact that they had been left untended for a good deal of time. A chandelier hung overhead, but several of the gems were missing, and they too were coated in a thick layer of dust. Harry got the feeling that they had either been spirited away by the occupants, or the precious stones sold in hard times.
"Mrs. Cole you say?" the maid asked, and when Dumbledore nodded, she bellowed out "MRS. COLE! VISITOR!"
Harry couldn't help but wince at the tone, and as it was it seemed that neither of the Dumbledore's could either.
"She'll be righ' with ya. Jus' wait 'ere," the maid told him.
"Thank you miss," Dumbledore replied with a polite smile, and the girl blushed despite her remaining suspicion before she headed towards the stairs.
A moment later, Harry heard footsteps on the stairs, as if descending from a great height (which he suspected to be true, given the tall, thin build of the house). The sound grew closer, until finally a sharp-featured woman came into sight, hastily wrapping a dressing gown around her. She had a mousy brown hair that was turning to an iron grey around the roots, and she swept a surprised and appraising gaze across her strangely dressed visitor before approaching to shake his hand.
"You'll be Mr. Dublybore then?" she asked, and Harry snickered at the mangling of his name.
"Dumbledore, madam," the man corrected. "You suggested that I meet you for an appointment this evening."
"That I did," she said, still staring with a little shock at his suit. "Well, you'd better come into my office then, hadn't you?" She cast a glance around the room as if she was half hoping and half afraid that someone might see her talking with her outlandish guest.
Crossing the entrance hall, she headed to the room on the left, opening the door and bustling in to take a seat behind a weather-beaten old desk. The furniture was odd and mismatched, and as with the hallway it showed an air of neglect beneath the neat surface. Dumbledore seated himself in the chair opposite and raised a small cloud of dust from the cushion.
"I am here to speak to you about Tom Riddle, and the matter of his future," Albus began. Mrs. Cole frowned at him.
"Are you his family then?" she asked.
"No, I am the headmaster of a school, and I wish to offer him a scholarship," he said, eyes sparkling slightly in the dim light.
"What school is this?" she asked, vague interest lighting in her eyes.
"It is called Hogwarts," Dumbledore replied simply. Mrs. Cole's frown deepened.
"Never heard of it."
"It is in Scotland," Dumbledore added in a helpful tone.
"Hmm…and you say he has a scholarship? How is that then? He was never registered for one," she continued, eyes narrowing slightly in the same mistrust that the maid had shown.
"Nevertheless, he has a place," Dumbledore said. Mrs. Cole looked him up and down again, and was about to say something when her eyes gained that momentary glaze. When they returned to normal, Dumbledore was sitting conspicuously dry in the chair, and a bottle of whisky had appeared beside her.
"Er…whisky?" she offered him, whilst Harry chuckled.
"What a thing to do to the poor woman," he commented laughingly as Dumbledore graciously declined.
"She appeared to be rather sharper than I would have hoped," his elder counterpart replied, not denying anything. "It would have been quite painstaking and troublesome otherwise."
Mrs. Cole showed herself to be no stranger to alcohol consumption, and promptly knocked back the small glass with gusto, apparently unconcerned about Dumbledore's presence.
"I was wondering if you could tell me a little more about him," he inquired delicately. "Some history perhaps."
"History you say?" Mrs. Cole asked, before nodding and pouring herself another glass. "His mother arrived at our door out of the rain, just like you did. She was very pregnant. We get that a lot, see, so we didn't turn her away. Didn't live long after though – said she wanted him to look just like his father, and I can't blame her because she wasn't a looker herself. Said 'e was to be called Tom for his father, Marvolo for her father, and Riddle, and that was all before she copped it." Harry frowned at her blunt relation of her death. Merope hadn't been the most charming girl, but she wasn't horrible either. "That weren't a pretty sight, nor what we should be dealing with, but you can't complain when they're dead, can you?" she asked, starting on her fourth glass.
"Indeed you cannot," Dumbledore replied agreeably, eyebrows high on his forehead.
"Funny name, Marvolo," she continued distantly. "Thought maybe she'd come from the circus, or one of them gypsy gangs. Not a Marvolo nor a Riddle turned up for the boy through all these years, so he's stayed here. Strange boy, is Tom."
"Yes, I expect he is," Dumbledore said, watching two pink spots appear on her cheeks as she stared down thoughtfully at the glass of whisky in her hand.
"Strange things happen around that boy…" she trailed off, before her head snapped up again. "He's got a place at your school, no matter what?"
"Unconditionally, yes," the wizard agreed.
"And nothing I say can change that?" she pursued.
"Nothing."
"All right then," she mumbled. "Don't know what you're going to get with that one, not at all. Strange lad," she repeated. "Strange baby too; always quiet."
"What about his personality?" Dumbledore asked, curious. Mrs. Cole frowned again.
"He's always so polite, but there's some odd things that happen around him that no one can explain," she said ruminatively. "Very secretive, but he helps around the house, stays out of trouble, and his grades in school are very good," she added with a hint of pride. "But as I said, strange things…"
"What kind of things?" Dumbledore gently pressed.
"Well, the other children are scared of him," she said slowly, downing her drink and missing the brief flash of unpleasant surprise that flitted across Dumbledore's face. "When he was growing up he was so timid and they all got together to get him to join in, but now the other children don't like him. Won't play with him at all. One day little Tina came downstairs and told me her bed had set alight when she was talking to him." She laughed suddenly. "Sounds like a fairy story, doesn't it? But beds don't just light themselves, same as rabbits don't hang themselves."
"Rabbits?" Dumbledore repeated with a deepening frown.
"Billy Stubbs's rabbit. He comes crying to me and we go up to find it hung from the rafters…well, Tom said he didn't do it, and I don't see how he could have got up there either, but they'd been arguing earlier…" she trailed off and took another swig of whisky, directly from the bottle this time.
"Then there was that time we went down to the seaside," she said. "We do every year to give the children a bit of a day out, but this time something happened… Tom and a few others went into a cave, and he said they'd just gone exploring, but little Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop have never been the same again. All we could get out of them was where they'd gone, but like I said, something happened in there – I'm sure of it. There were lots of things, lots of funny little things." She paused, obviously in the thrall of memory.
"Nothing else like the fire though," she said with some deliberation. "We was sure it was him, but I think he got careful after that. Strange though, because he's such a sweet boy. I wouldn't label him for some kind of pyromaniac or vandal or something like you see in the news, but it wouldn't be too hard to get the matches from the kitchen. I'm just stumped as how he got it to go up so fast, 'cause one of the maids saw it too, and by the time we'd come back the whole room was alight," she muttered. "Wouldn't know why he did it…children don't seem to need reasons."
"Hmm," Albus hummed, but from years of watching the old man, he showed signs of surprise and worry in his eyes. "Well, perhaps I could meet Tom face-to-face," he suggested.
Mrs. Cole snapped back to awareness. "Oh yes, go on up. The names are on the doors," she said, before returning her full attention to the bottle of whiskey.
Dumbledore made a small bow before exiting the room, leaving her behind. Heading to the stairs, he travelled up two levels before turning down a shabby little corridor. From the look of it, he was bypassing the normal method of finding the boy and was simply travelling straight to him as if by…magic. Eventually he stopped in front of a wizened old door with the words 'Tom Marvolo Riddle' scrawled on in a crooked hand. Harry noticed that all of the other doors had two names on them, but Riddle's had only one.
Knocking loudly, Dumbledore turned the handle and entered.
The room was small and dingy, lit only by the light of a candle and the fast fading daylight from the window. A rundown camp bed sat near the window, although not flush against the wall for Harry could see that the window obviously leaked, and a mild patina of mildew coated the space around it. Nearby sat a decrepit old wardrobe with one door on it, the other propped by its side as if it had been placed there for someone to fix but never had been.
Standing in front of his bed was the young Tom Riddle. One arm was shoved into a worn pocket of his trousers as he leaned nonchalantly to one side, but Harry could see the threads of apprehension surrounding him. His hair was as dark as ever, and cut about his ears in an unruly fashion that made him look more like Harry than he could have ever imagined. Sharp eyes regarded the younger Dumbledore with both distaste and suspicion.
"What do you want?" he demanded. Albus smiled.
"I have come to offer you a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," he said calmly, unruffled by the tone.
"You're lying!" Tom exclaimed balling his fists. Albus seemed rather taken aback by this statement too. "You're one of those people sent by that witch-woman to cart me off the madhouse! Well I'm not going! Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop can tell you, I never did anything to them. That old lady's the one who should be sent to the asylum!"
Dumbledore recovered quickly, assuming a reassuring expression. "I assure you that I am not going to take you to the asylum," he continued soothingly.
Tom laughed humourlessly. "You can't kid me old man. She's sent ones like you before. Mad as a hatter, she is," he said without a trace of regret or chagrin.
"Have you perhaps considered that these…incidents she mentioned could be magic?" Dumbledore said slowly. Tom looked up at him sharply.
"Magic?" he said, half-scornful, half-hopeful.
Dumbledore nodded over his half moon spectacles, a slight smile on his lips. "You are a wizard Tom, as am I. This magic you have been doing…we call it wild magic because of its spontaneous and accidental nature."
Tom's eyes became very wide and he sat back on his bed, looking down at his hands in wonder. "I always knew I was special," he said softly. "I could do things, ever since-" he paused and seemed to realise his mistake, carrying on almost seamlessly. "I can make people do things, and animals too without training them." Then he paused and looked up at the headmaster suspiciously. "How do I know you're telling the truth?" he asked pointedly.
Dumbledore didn't answer, but his eyes had lost their twinkle. Drawing his wand, he pointed it at the wardrobe and it was promptly consumed in flames. Tom let out an animalistic screech of rage and darted towards the wardrobe just as the flames died, leaving it unscathed. Harry couldn't blame him for the look of malice he sent at the wizard – all his worldly possessions must have been in there, and Harry knew what it was like to keep what little one owned in something so small as that wardrobe, not to mention the feeling of loss when they were destroyed. He had experienced that far too often when his uncle locked his trunk away indefinitely.
Harry also thought he detected a hint of fear in Tom's eyes, and he found he couldn't blame him for that either. Dumbledore had used a very Slytherin method of proving it to him – playing exactly the same trick on the boy as he had on his peer. That look of fear grew as there came a rattling from within the wardrobe, and a tin box slowly inched out of the open door to float over to the bed.
"It seems, Tom, that you have something you should not," Albus said mildly. "Open it," he added when the boy seemed to be frozen in indecision.
Slowly, Tom inched towards the still rattling box and took the lid off, emptying its contents onto the bedspread. The sudden silence that filled the room was deafening, and Harry peered curiously at the small variety of treasures the boy had hoarded. There was a penny whistle, a silver thimble, a miniature metal car, and a spinner top among the mess. They all seemed to be things that glimmered temptingly, a feeling that Harry was most familiar with.
A childhood spent without any toys had caused Harry to find the most ingenious hiding places for his hoarded treasures, only to be taken out when there was no one to see them. This tendency had served him well, and the first thing he'd done when he'd been given his new room was to scour it for a suitable hide-away, thus finding the loose floorboard.
"We do not tolerate stealing in Hogwarts," Dumbledore said seriously. "Before the summer is out, I want you to return these objects to their owners and apologise." He winked and tapped his nose, adding, "And I shall know if you don't."
"Yes sir, of course," Tom replied, face resolving itself into perfect politeness and quickly hiding the traces of bitterness that had resided there before. Harry had to admire his skill, for even at that young age his expressions were fluid, appearing natural, unlike many of the mask-like defences Harry had witnessed on those older and more experienced than him. Had the boy not been slipping up so badly, Harry would have believed his sincerity completely.
"Where can I get one of those?" he continued, pointing at Dumbledore's wand.
"Ah, wands are available from Ollivanders' in Diagon Alley," he said, giving him instructions on how to get there from the orphanage. "Of course, I will accompany you on your first visit-"
"I can go alone sir," Tom said cutting him off. "I'm used to travelling by myself."
Dumbledore looked for a moment as if he were about to protest, but instead said, "Are you sure? I would be able to give you valuable information on the Wizarding World during the visit."
Tom looked torn at this. It was obvious that he neither liked nor trusted the wizard in front of him, but the lure of information was a strong one. Then, after some effort he said, "Yes, all right. Thank you sir."
Dumbledore smiled, eyes crinkling at the edges with faint amusement. "Good. Then I will pick you up tomorrow to collect your school supplies."
The memory began to fade around them, and Harry extracted himself from it, the image of Tom's carefully schooled expression burning into his memory.
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Notes: Yes, yes, I know. Filler. Well, I've had an art exam over the past few days and haven't had the time to edit the important bits out of this chapter. Nothing as far as I remember was taken word for word from the books – I at least made a token effort to alter it. And horcruxes…will they appear? Maybe. I still don't know if I like them or not. I'll try and make the young!Riddle memories new/more interesting from here on too.
