Tom Riddle clutched broomstick in his arms and watched his mama talking to Regulus. She'd been acting slightly strange lately, eyes sometimes far away and looking at something that he couldn't see, and he wondered what was going on. His eyes narrowed as he studied Regulus. He trusted the man, yes. As an uncle and a newly inducted member of the family, Regulus was doing well getting along with the rest of them. He'd put him on family probation if that changed.

There was nobody that Tom cared about more than his mom. Not Regulus, not Pozey, not the snakes, not even Nana Mary and Papa Charlie, although he cared about them all very much too. His allegiance first went to his mama. She understood him better than anybody else. And she must have known that he needed something fun to do with her. He'd missed her lately, and he was sure she missed spending time with him too. And at last, she looked excited about something and not like she was hiding tiredness behind her eyes. She should know well enough that he could tell everything she was feeling no matter how hard she tried to keep it from him. Same as how she could always tell what he was feeling.

"Where are we going to learn?" he asked her. She bent down and ruffled his hair.

"I'm thinking it would be a good idea to see if the entrance room has somewhere for us to practice," she told him. He nodded. He'd been thinking the same thing.

"Let's go now then," he said. She smiled at him, and he smiled back.

"Of course," she told him, and he grabbed her free hand, allowing for her other hand to grab her own broomstick, then tugged her with him to the entryway. Regulus followed, and Tom knew that he was going to be the one to teach them how to fly. It was interesting to have a wizard around. Of course he and Zia were both magical, but this was one who had been raised among other wizards by a wizard family in the wizard world. Regulus knew about a lot of things that neither of them did. It was useful.

Regulus had also been the one to help them find Pozey, and Tom knew that once everything settled back into normalcy, or whatever sense of normal they had as a family of magic people, house elves, and snakes, she would help his mum have less stress. Besides, Pozey was helpful and good at answering his questions. The three of them stopped in the middle of the entryway and Tom watched the door in the wall close up behind them. It was an effective security system, he had to admit. He remembered how Regulus' horrible ex-sister had tried to attack them, and how his mama sent him away into one of the back rooms.

He wasn't stupid, he knew that his mama had done it to keep him safe. He also knew that she'd been in a lot of danger. She could have been killed. And she had been hurt. One day when he was older and more powerful…maybe he'd find that woman. Lycoris Black. He'd catalogued her name away in his head, to save it if a time ever came that he needed to remember it. His eyes narrowed. To save it for if a time ever came that he had a chance to destroy her.

Except his mama wouldn't like that.

His mama would tell him that killing something or someone wasn't okay unless it was the only way to defend himself. Tom took deep breaths to cleanse himself of the anger he'd felt towards that woman. She'd been raised differently, that lady. She didn't have a good family like he did. Regulus had said as much. Although Regulus didn't behave like his ex-sister, which is why he was part of a new family now. Why would there be such a difference between the two, when they were both raised by the same family in the same house? Perhaps they were treated differently by their parents. Either way, he would have mercy and refrain from finding and killing Lycoris.

"Tom, do you want to do it?" his mama asked him, pulling him away from visions of torturing Lycoris as she screamed for mercy. He allowed himself the visions, just not the actions. And now he would put those visions away and mentally burn them. It was simply a way of working through his anger, and he was calm now, so he didn't need them and would keep from thinking about that any more. Everyone was safe and Regulus had done something to Lycoris anyways. From the sound of it whatever he'd done was torture enough. Tom was satisfied with that.

"Of course," he replied flashing another smile at her. He focused on thinking his desires to the room. We'd like somewhere to learn to fly, he thought to himself. Learn to fly on a broomstick, he added in case clarification was needed. A door swirled into existence in front of them. It looked different than the others he'd seen. All of them had been wood, done in a neat wood doorframe. This door was more of an archway. A stone archway. With metal gates. Strange. Where were they going?

He looked over at the other two people standing next to him. Neither of them seemed to recognize the archway either. Well, the house wouldn't lead them somewhere dangerous, he knew that for sure. Well maybe if they specifically wanted to go somewhere dangerous it would, but not for something random. His mama looked down at him, and he looked back at her. She smiled encouragingly. He was still clinging to her fingers, and so pulled her up to the gates with him.

"I can't reach the latch mama. If you unlatch it, I'll push it open. That way we can do it together," he said to her. Excitement was bubbling up in him now. Magic was always exciting, always new and intriguing to him even if it was something he'd seen before. He wanted to know how it worked, where it came from, why it did the things it did. Why certain words made certain things happen when his mama or Regulus were using their wands. Was it just a wand that could channel magic or were there other things that could do it?

"Okay then," she agreed, then reached out and flipped up the latch. He pushed the gate open and they walked through. They were in a short passageway. He knew it was short because there was light shining through from the other end of it. He picked up speed, and if she hadn't been walking quickly too he probably would have been dragging her through. What was out there? Where was the light coming from?

Blinding. Tom closed his eyes and then shielded them with his hand to prepare for opening them back up. It was bright, brighter than in the house or the passageway, and his eyes needed to adjust. When they did, a huge grin spread across his face. Amazing.

It was a room, but it wasn't. It was indoors, but outdoors all at once. It didn't take him very long to realize that this was some kind of gigantic greenhouse type of place. It didn't have the heat of a greenhouse though, or the glass. The ceiling of the place looked like it was bewitched to look like clear blue sky, with a bright sunny light filtering out of it. The room was gigantic. There were entire very large trees in it, and it looked like there were even birds living in them. There was a small lake in one part of it. Right in the middle was a huge grassy field.

The field was drastically overgrown, probably because nobody had used it for so long, since the house had been empty for who knows how many years. Hundreds probably. But the moment they stepped onto it, the grass mowed itself down neatly to a more reasonable length. How did it do that? He could feel how wide he was smiling because it was starting to hurt his cheeks a little. When he looked over at his mama, she was smiling in the same way. Looking back at Regulus, who was standing a little ways away from them, he saw that the man was also smiling. Well this place was amazing after all.

"The house spoils us," Tom said out loud to nobody in particular.

"I think you're right," his mama replied. "I wasn't expecting a place like this to be in here."

"I don't think any of us were," Regulus said.

"The snakes said there was a conservatory, and I've seen that. This is a completely different place. Incredible."

Zia looked around at the room that the house had provided for them to practice flying in. She couldn't believe that it was really there, but with magic she supposed something like this was definitely possible. Rowena Ravenclaw had created this place after all, and as one of the founders and presumably builders of Hogwarts, it was entirely plausible that she'd built this room herself. Zia looked around at everything in awe. The woman was definitely one powerful witch. Powerful and intelligent enough to create a room like this.

"Well the house didn't give us this place just to look at, let's get started with your flying lessons," Regulus said, reminding her why they were there in the first place. She looked down at Tom, who nodded in agreement, and they set off to the center of the field. Once they reached the middle, Regulus instructed them to place their broomsticks down on the grass. "Okay, now place your hand out and say 'up' confidently to your broom. It should come up to meet your hand."

"Up!" Zia and Tom both said in unison. Each of their booms shot up straight into their outstretched hands. Regulus' eyebrows raised a little, as if he wasn't expecting them to do so well on their first try.

"Well then. Now mount your brooms. I've brought mine so I can be in the air with you and help if something happens," he instructed. They all got onto their broomsticks. Zia was surprised at how comfortable the broomstick was, then remembered that they had cushioning charms placed on them so they wouldn't dig in and hurt. "And kick off from the ground!"

All three pushed against the ground and Zia felt herself rising in the air, hands clasping the handle of the broom, slightly nervous because she'd never flown before. Well not on a broomstick anyways. Airplanes were very different than this though, there was hands down zero comparison. Then suddenly, it was if all that nervousness melted away and there was freedom.

All her life she'd wondered what it would be like to fly like this. To feel the wind whipping her hair around her face and to look out at everything below her. She'd imagined it before. Imagined floating, the feeling of being above other things like a bird. This was nothing like that. She felt herself fly higher, leaving everything on the ground. Worries, doubts, anything that weighed on her mind. Only light things stayed with her. Hope. Family.

She looked around at everything below her, including Regulus and Tom, although Tom seemed to be catching up faster than Regulus. Interesting. She'd been wondering how he would take to flying, it was never mentioned in the books. Apparently he took to it well, because he didn't even look afraid. He looked completely in control, and loving it. The smile on his face was big enough to match her own.

"What do you think Tom?" she shouted down to him.

"This is amazing! Why didn't we do this sooner mama?" he shouted back. She laughed.

"I don't know! We never had a safe place to try before, maybe that's why." She shouted down again. She closed her eyes, feeling the air swirling around her. Another gift from Rowena, this room. This feeling, she supposed, was also a gift from Rowena since it wouldn't be possible without the room. There was even a breeze.

Thud, tighten.

Something had grabbed on to her arm while her eyes were closed. It had claws. But it wasn't very heavy. Some kind of magical creature? It would make sense for there to be magical creatures here. But what kind.

"Mama!" Tom screamed, and she could hear the fear in his voice.

"Zia! Hold still! It's okay, just hold still!" Regulus shouted up at her. What was this thing? She opened her eyes and turned her face to look at the thing. One beady eye stared into hers. It blinked. A bird. It was just a bird. A huge bird, but still a bird. That would explain the lightness. And the claws…she looked down and saw that its talons were clenched around her wrist. She looked back up at its head.

"An eagle?" she murmured questioningly. The bird tossed its head and ruffled its feathers. "Not an eagle, okay. But you're as big as one. And you kind of look similar to one." It puffed all of its feathers out at this comment. "Okay sorry. You're just big I guess. Sorry."

She examined it. It was charcoal gray, but when it saw that she was looking at it, the bird spread open one wing. The inside feathers of its wing were red, gold and blue. Looking better at its head, she saw two long black feathers gracefully arching up. It blinked at her, and cocked its head expectantly, as if waiting for her to identify it correctly. "You look like the bird on the Ravenclaw symbol almost." The bird let out a note. It wasn't a chirp, or a cry, or a caw, or a screech. It was a note. The bird was singing. The bird was…she gasped.

"You can't be…a phoenix?" she whispered. The bird blinked again. "But aren't they all supposed to be scarlet and gold?" The bird puffed its feathers out again. "Apparently not. So you are a phoenix?" The bird sang out a note.

Well Arlena Ravenclaw, apparently this house had bigger secrets than I thought you meant, Zia thought to herself.