Author's Note: This chapter will be revised soon, but the plot and idea of it will remain the same.

Valeria and the others having left for Hogsmeade, Charlotte went to the common room to work on her essay, only to find a group of first and second years who, in the absence of most of the older students, were having some kind of wizard card trading bazaar. Unable to focus while listening to cries of "I've got Wendelin the Weird! Who wants to trade for Wendelin the Weird?" and "Merlins! Get your Merlins here! Most famous wizard of all time, folks; everyone needs a Merlin for their collection!", Charlotte left for the library instead.

Arriving in the library, she noticed Tom, poring over a book, a stack of others next to it. Joining him seemed like the obvious thing to do. She approached his table and pulled out a chair. Tom looked up, smiled, and closed the book, pushing it aside.

"Hello, Charlotte. I'm surprised you aren't in Hogsmeade."

"I forgot all about it and had planned on studying today." she answered. "What about you? Surely you haven't got some assignment due that you put off? Like I have."

"No," he laughed, although there might have been some judgment in it. "I just wasn't interested in going to Hogsmeade."

She glanced over at the book he had evidently just finished with. The title read Wizarding Families Compendium IX. "Studying for end of term exams?" she asked.

He nodded. "History of Magic."

"Ah. Morgan le Fey's lineage then?" Charlotte ventured a guess as to the topic of his research.

"No wonder you always get top marks, very astute," he said. "I started out doing schoolwork, and then I found myself delving into wizarding ancestry; I think it's very interesting."

"It can be. Mostly when it's your own," she replied. "In my opinion."

"Do you know much about your family, your ancestry?"

"Some," she answered. "Well, a lot actually—I just haven't read it; my mum's got books worth, you see. My father's family has been in France for centuries, my mother's too, but not for quite as long; I think they came from Germany before that. Some notable duelers, potioneers, politicians—a bit of everything really."

"Must be nice," Tom said wistfully, but not without exposing a certain degree of anger in his voice.

"You don't know your family's history, do you?"

"No."

"It's interesting to know, but really it doesn't matter. Who your parents were, or their parents. You for instance, are a great wizard, and people will admire you for that. People's legacies ought to be built on their own merits, don't you think?" She smiled and after a moment Tom smiled back. Then his eyes narrowed in thought.

"But you're a pureblood."

"Yes."

"And you enjoy certain esteem on that account?"

"Yes."

He raised his eyebrows, communicating his question.

"That's…more general. It's not the same as what I was talking about."

"Hm." Tom said no more on the subject.

They sat in silence, Tom thumbing through the pages of one of his books, while Charlotte pulled out some parchment to work on the Muggle Studies essay she had been avoiding. The assigned topic was different for everyone; hers was automobiles. Valeria had gotten electricity, at first, but managed to convince Professor White to allow her to write on muggle clothing instead, presenting the fact that blending in with muggle society was a challenge for wizards when it came to dress especially, and perhaps she, Valeria, would work to improve that in future.

Realizing that right in front of her was a person who had lived around muggles most of his life, she tapped on the back of the book Tom was reading to get his attention. "Sorry to bother you, but…" He lowered the book.

"Do you need help with something?"

"Yes. Well, sort of. You've lived in the muggle world," Charlotte began. Riddle's face changed, his jaw clenched, but Charlotte continued despite observing these signs that he regarded his time around muggles resentfully. "So, what can you tell me about au-to-mo-biles?" she inquired, slipping into her French accent as said the word by syllable, which sounded like "otomobeels". Tom regained his normal pleasant expression.

"Automobiles," he said correctly. "Or cars, they're also called. What do you want to know about them?"

Charlotte shrugged. "How about how you, um, steer them?" she asked, uncertain of the word she was using.

"There's a steering wheel"—he drew a circle in the air—"and when it's turned then the wheels turn. But maybe you mean how you drive them?" She nodded. "There are also pedals you press with your foot, one to make it go and one to make it stop." He spoke with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

"And what makes it move, since it isn't magic?"

"They have to put something called petrol [gasoline] in it, and if it runs out, it stops. There's something called an engine… I don't really know."

"That sounds very inconvenient," Charlotte said. "I suppose I can compare and contrast a car with wizarding modes of transportation. It's most similar to a broomstick, probably. Only unreliable, by the sounds of it," she said, thinking of the need for petrol. Suddenly she let out an exasperated sort of sigh and pushed her parchment away from her.

"I hate Muggle Studies. I'd have dropped it already if I could."

"Why did you take it?" Tom asked, with some evident distaste.

"Silly thirteen-year-old me thought it was a good idea. I had a real fear that we were somehow all going to be found out because of this war—well, both Grindelwald's and the one the muggles are fighting. I'd just had to leave my home country, my friends, Beauxbatons—and I blamed war for that. I imagined that we would be forced to interact with muggles, so I thought it would be useful to understand their ways. I no longer believe that, so most of the time I'm left loathing the class because it just feels foolish to invest so much energy trying to understand things I'll never come in contact with or need to use. And I wish I could take Arithmancy instead." Tom smiled at this.

"Yes, Arithmancy is fascinating," he agreed. "What made you stop thinking the muggles would find out about us?"

She thought for a while before answering. "When I was little, I thought magic could do anything, made us all practically invincible. Every problem seemed to have a solution in magic; of course I eventually learned that there are some things magic can't do. But third year, when I came here, I was emotional and illogical and, frankly, still a child; so I got scared." Then her tone changed, "I didn't want to lose the world of magic like I'd lost everything else…" She smiled to herself. "I never made that connection until just now."

The way she spoke about magic resonated with Tom. There was a kind of excited energy in him as he listened, but it faded as the continuation of her explanation led to talking about herself, so she did not notice the almost frightening expression on his face, as he thought about the power of magic.

Shaking herself out of the revelation she had just had, Charlotte finished what she had been saying. "I soon went back to believing that magic was powerful enough we had nothing to fear. Because wizards are fundamentally superior to muggles; we can do all the things a muggle human can do, but we can also do more," Charlotte said. "We even tend to live longer than they do," she added. A sort of glow appeared in Tom's eyes.

"Indeed, we can," he said quietly.

"Although," Charlotte said reflectively, "I will say that the wizarding world is too tied to tradition."

"How do you mean?" Little did he know that asking this would launch her into a speech on a matter that, evidently, she had given a lot of consideration to.

"Muggles have things like electricity, and we're still lighting our halls with candles. Muggles used to use candles, but now they don't because they invented something better. Yet do we embrace the future as they do? No, we reject it. Of course, electricity is not so simple a matter, not a good example in this case; we'd have to be connected to some source of power, meaning either having our own, or using the muggles', which is entirely unthinkable." Charlotte's speech accelerated as she continued talking. Then, after a break in her long-winded thought, she said, "Make no mistake, I don't in any way esteem muggles above us, but I thoroughly dislike our kind's dismissal of things that could be of use to us, as well as their refusal to think more progressively."

"Thoroughly." Tom repeated with a laugh, choosing to emphasize this word from Charlotte's speech, as it highlighted the intensity, the enthusiasm, with which she had spoken. She laughed too, a bit of a nervous laugh, as she considered that given that the majority of Tom's friends came from pureblood supremacist families, he was likely to think the same way, and her comments had not been entirely in agreement with typical pureblood philosophy.

"You must think me a very peculiar pureblood, expressing such ideas," she said.

"It does strike me as unusual, but I can see the reason in them."

This relieved Charlotte's concern. She didn't want to give him cause to change his mind about her, especially now that more or less everyone in Slytherin house was aware they were going out (even though this was not exactly the case, as she had only agreed to go to the Christmas party with him, nothing more). Discovering that she enjoyed spending time with him, his intelligence and humor making for excellent conversation, she didn't want their friendship, or whatever it was, to be lost.

...

"I have a confession to make," Valeria said very seriously. "I'm sorry, but I didn't get a butterbeer on your behalf at The Three Broomsticks." She cracked a smile. Charlotte laughed.

"And why not?" she asked, feigning disapproval.

"Well I opened the door, took a step inside, decided I didn't want to stand to drink it, and walked right back out. I will admit I braved the crowds in Honeydukes so that I could stock up on sugar quills and toothflossing stringmints, but those are essentials." She laughed. "Oh and I got some licorice wands. Do you want one?"

"Yes please!" Charlotte took the sweet from her friend. "So what did you do the rest of the time? Hang around Gladrags Wizardwear?"

"No, I fancied a visit to the Hog's Head to pet the goats," Valeria answered sarcastically. Then giving her real answer, "I chatted with the shopkeeper, Lorelei, until some pesky third-years came in—I could tell they were third-years because they were gawking over everything like they'd never been there before—wanting to try on a bunch of things, but they didn't spend a sickle, the little trolls. Anyway, how was your day? Are you an Ancient Runes expert now?"

"I didn't study Ancient Runes yet."

"Well you finished the essay, right?"

"I worked on it." After speaking with Tom, she had in fact written up a draft of her paper.

"Hm. I guess it is a good thing you stayed back from Hogsmeade today…"

"I talked to Tom for a while. He was here too."

"Oh! If that was your intention all along you could have just said so," Valeria laughed.

"I didn't know he was going to be there," Charlotte said. "But he told me about cars, for the Muggle Studies assignment."

"He told you about cars?" she repeated in surprise.

"Yes. What's so shocking about that?"

"Haven't you noticed he almost never talks about Muggle things?" Her face broke into a grin. "He must really like you."

Thus began the week of exams.

Transfiguration went smoothly despite Charlotte's neglect of the extra practice she had intended. The Astronomy exam required them to take part of the test at night, which caused a great deal of grumbling about missed sleep from some students, while from others, an excitement about being out in the castle at that time without breaking any rules. Everything went quite well, until Potions, when Charlotte accidently skipped a step in brewing her Wiggenweld potion; when their time was up, she had managed to improve it to some extent, but she was certain her grade would suffer.

But with Potions, her last exam, out of the way, it was almost the hour of Slughorn's Christmas party.

Author's Note: You'll notice I've tried to use British vocabulary when I can and it appears in the dialogue, with American equivalent following in brackets. I totally made up the Wizarding Family Compendium IX book that Riddle was reading (maybe you can guess what he was actually doing—not researching for History of Magic like Charlotte thought) and I also made up Lorelei as the name of the shopkeeper at Gladrags Wizardwear, but I did use some canon references with the chocolate frog cards, all the types of candy Valeria mentions, and also the joke about the Hog's Head Inn. Hope you're enjoying my story! Thanks for reading!