Chapter #53 – The Last Year
The morning after his short trip to Little Hangleton, Tom felt so wonderful that he had to tell someone about what he had done, but his hands were too shaky to be able to write a letter. Telling any of the professors would have just been utterly stupid. And, since he knew that he would not be able to hold it in until the end of the month when his friends came back to school, he ran down to the Chamber and told Lilith. She thought that it was all very fascinating and listened intently as he told her, feeling like a proud mother.
Of course, the next afternoon when he saw Dumbledore in the library, the professor gave him a strange look. The auburn haired teacher had a newspaper with him, which he set down shortly after seeing Tom as he looked for a book. The only thing was that when he left he seemed to purposefully leave the paper. After he had gone, Tom went to look at it. It was a copy of The Times, a paper he had not seen since he was in Muggle London the previous summer. A small article on the page it was opened to talked about three mysterious deaths in that had occurred two nights before in Northumberland. He looked at the article with surprise then looked towards the doors that led from the library. Did Dumbledore suspect? Or did he know? Tom turned away from the paper then went back to his search for the books he needed for his Charms essay, trying to forget about it.
Soon the holiday was over and Tom could not wait for his friends to get back. The afternoon of September first, he waited outside the castle's entrance for everyone to get there. Darcy was the first to arrive. Though Tom wanted to tell him what he had done as soon as he got there, he wanted to wait for all his roommates and Lena before saying anything, so he did not have to repeat it too many times. Soon all of them but Lena were there. The boys talked about classes and such while they waited for her.
The young woman came running when she saw all of them standing by the castle's entrance. She tossed her arms around Tom, happy to see him again. With all the younger students wandering around, though, they would save her kisses for later. She was the first one to say anything about his Head Boy badge, for he had not told any of them about it. They all congratulated him but he told them, in all honesty, that he did not think it was all that great because of the responsibilities.
The six of them walked off from the entrance for a bit more privacy and Tom told all of them the events that had taken place on his birthday. The reaction was pretty much what he expected from everyone. But Lena's reaction was a bit more severe than he had thought it would be. She looked about ready to storm off or start yelling but she did not do either. He was sure, though, that she would let it pass, as she always did with such things. But what she said after she thought about it a moment, shocked them all.
"But why didn't you come home with me?"
"Well, I can't use magic away…"
"If you were going to wait until your birthday to do all of this, you could have passed the Apparition test and not done that illegally at least! You are seventeen now, after all." She shook her head. "Honestly…"
Tom only stared at her as that reality sunk in, but, still, he had wanted to practice before his birthday, to make sure everything was perfect. And even though this new bit of information annoyed him somewhat, he did still have good reasons for having stayed over the summer at school. Even if it would have been nice to have stayed with Lena all summer.
After that, they all went to the Great Hall and got seats. There were not many students there yet, but they were sure there would be more soon as that the Feast was drawing nearer. Within half an hour the Hall was nearly full. Two of the professors that usually helped with the new first years came in and they knew it was almost time for the evening to begin. A few minutes later the crowd of nervous first years shuffled in, looking around at their new surrounding. Tom could not believe that he had ever been like that, but he knew that he had to have been worse.
The Sorting Hat sung its new song and Nathan got rather sentimental about it, since it was the last time he would ever get to hear it, but the other boys were glad to be getting out of the school. Even though Tom had thought of Hogwarts as a home over the past six years, he too was glad to finally be graduating, but it was mainly because of the fact that he wanted to be able to use magic outside of school.
Dinner was served. The headmaster gave out his notices. And then all the upperclassmen filed out one by one to go to their common rooms when they had been given the new password. Tom, though, had to stay afterwards to meet the new Head Girl, Mavie Oakley. She was a rather pretty young woman with short brown hair, but she was not as pretty as Lena. She was in his Charms class and was a great student. He knew that she was a halfblood and that would be tolerable for him since they would be spending a good bit of time together. But Tom would be too busy that year to have probably have even cared if she had been a mudblood.
The weekend started the very next day and all the students could be found wandering around the castle and grounds. As usual, Tom and his friends took their "traditional" walk around the lake. They talked about their summers more and what they were thinking about doing once they graduated. When they asked Tom what he planned to do, he told them he was not entirely sure yet because it all depended on how certain acquaintances worked out.
Classes started back Monday and Tom suddenly felt the pressure. Final project topics, which they would be starting, in some cases, when their Christmas holiday was over, were due right after Halloween. Tom pretty much knew what he wanted to do for all his classes, but getting them written down in words would be hard. And then the fact that the potion he wanted to make for his final project could be considered an "experimental" one bothered him. Lena simply suggested that he send the potion's ingredients to her father and have him present it to his committee, since he was on the Committee for Experimental Potions. Tom did so and a little more than a week later got approval from them that he could do it.
The correspondence kept coming from Korbin and Grindelwald. Though the letters from Korbin had become fewer, the number from Grindelwald had remained constant. He always asked Tom certain questions that he knew were because the Dark wizard had sent him the grimoire. And Tom always seemed to answer the questions right, because Grindelwald was quite impressed with him. One day, though, Tom accidentally signed "Tom Riddle" at the bottom of a letter, which got an response of "so that's your real name" back from Grindelwald. Tom felt rather stupid for having done it, hating that he told a Dark Wizard that Muggle name.
And when it came to thinking about Grindelwald, Tom could not also help but think of the situation on the Continent. The "Allies" as they called themselves, were retaking the areas invaded by Germany and pushing towards Berlin to take the city and overthrow the dictatorial government. Just as the Muggles were helping the ravaged civilian Muggles, the wizards were doing the same for their own and getting rebuilding started a lot sooner than the Muggles were, but that seemed to be something that wizards did anyway. Many people were sure that it was just a matter of months before the war was over.
Of course, his autumn would have been going a lot better if his headaches had not come back. The headaches had not been really bothering him since midsummer but now they seemed worse than before. Returning once again to Madam Valen, she gave him the potion she had been giving him for the pain and gave him directions so he could make it himself so he would not have to keep coming to her. Both of them thought it was the stress of his classes on top of having to be in charge of the students that was making them come back. Tom would have given anything at times to have taken back that attempt to Apparate on school grounds, which he knew was what had started them.
With final project topics in and their assignments for the weekend done, Lena planned to sneak down to Tom's room with him to talk and spend the night with him. But, as they crept down there, Lena under the Cloak, Tom froze, seeing Dumbledore checking the dungeons on one of his rounds of the castle. They nodded to each other, but he seemed to be looking just behind him at the spot that Tom knew Lena was hiding under the Cloak. After a moment, Dumbledore moved on and Tom wondered if Dumbledore knew that Lena was there.
Once they were in the room, Lena started talking about it worriedly, saying that Dumbledore made eye contact with her and she was completely scared over it. How he had done it, though, none of the boys there could figure out. Tom felt, though, that it was the same as had happened over the summer. Since they could not come up with a plausible solution to it, they dropped it and started talking about other things and somehow they got to the subject of the approaching Christmas holiday.
Lena suddenly said that Tom was invited to come home with her for Christmas since he had not done so over the summer. She also said that her father was going to be having a few parties, two of which were going to be all Dark wizards. Darcy said he was going to be going to two of them with his parents most likely and Rex said he was going with his father to one, though it was one that was for the wealthy purebloods, whether Dark wizards or not. It all sounded very interesting to Tom and he agreed to go, which made Lena very happy.
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To my reviewers –
Liv - ^_^ I'm very glad you loved it…and, well, he needed to kill some time *giggles at pun* before doing the "dastardly deed", so what better way that to look around Hogsmeade? And I love that word choice of yours…"dastardly deed"…
lord archimonde – for one, it would have taken too long to drive them to the point of insanity and, for another, the Cruciatus Curse would have drawn attention…they would have screamed, you know…and I'm *sure* he would want to get it over with as quickly as possible…I know *I* would want to just kill them and get back to school…
Lady Snake - *giggles* you're silly…^_^
