"Malfoy, Aine."

Tom watched as his newfound friend went to the stool. The hat took a few minutes before it called out, "Slytherin!"

"Moretti, Gloria."

Tom took to watching the ceiling. The clouds looked as though they were going to storm, but it wasn't raining. They just loomed with the threat of a downpour.

There were a few more names before, "Riddle, Thomas."

Tom had been keeping track of how fast his heart beat before his name was called. Now, he walked slowly up to the stool and sat down gingerly.

"I sense a remarkable future for you, boy. You would like that, wouldn't you?" a voice said in Tom's ear.

"Of course," Tom thought. He didn't know the hat would hear him.

"Yes…yes…I knew you'd say that…You'd love to make someone of yourself. To tell the world that you're not just some hapless orphan…Yes. I see that. Such talent. I could put you in Ravenclaw…But no. Your place is where greatness is fostered and demanded. I declare you, Tom Riddle, in Slytherin!"

The Slytherin table clapped and cheered for him as he sat down. He almost plopped on the bench in relief.

"Good going, Tom!" Aine whispered next to him.

"Thanks," he sighed with a smile. His eyes did a quick scan of the Great Hall when he noticed someone looking at him from another table. It was the girl who had been called up after Aine. Her red-brown hair shown in the candlelight as her large, deer-like, brown eyes focused on him. She looked very small, younger than eleven. She cocked her head to the side, like a dog, as though considering Tom when he looked at her.

Tom's eyebrows knit in confusion. Why was this girl staring outright at him? Did he have something on his face?

"Are you alright?" Aine asked, startling Tom out of his trance.

"Yes. Yes, of course. It's just that there's this little odd girl sitting at the Gryffindor table who keeps staring at me—"

"Well, come on. The prefects are calling us. We have to go," Aine hurried. Tom nodded and followed her.

That first night, Tom slept more fitfully than he ever had at the orphanage.

"TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE!"

Was he dreaming? Or was someone shouting his name from faraway?

"Tom! You great, bloody prat! Get out of bed!"

Now he knew someone was shouting right in his ear, and it was a shrill voice that bounced from one ear to the other painfully. "Huh?" he mumbled stupidly.

"Don't you realize that classes start in fifteen minutes?"

"Enough with the yelling…" He shook his head to see a very distressed Aine. "Good morning."

"Oh, it's going to be, alright, if you don't get your bum out of bed," she said.

Tom sat up and scratched his head. Late for the first day of class? No problem. "Can you please leave the boys' dormitory so I can change?" he asked politely.

Aine looked like she was about to yell, again, but she deflated, and walked out of the room without a sound.

Tom came down to the Common Room five minutes later. His hair wasn't brushed, his eyes still had crust in them, and his voice had the craggy sound of a voice not in use for eight hours or so.

"Come on. We've got potions, first thing. You're really lucky that potions is almost right next door to the Common Room. Everyone's already had their breakfast and everything. Can you imagine being late on the first day? Absolutely irresponsible…" Aine continued on as she dragged Tom to potions.

They got to the potions dungeon and sat in the back of the class.

"So you are the next year for Slytherin…I see," hissed a voice from the storage room. A very tall woman stepped out from it. Her thick curls of hair shone like golden scales. When she strolled past a torch, Tom could've sworn he saw a glint of green. She moved in a slither-y fashion as if her body waved with the air current (if there was any current in the dungeons…).

"I am Professor Arboc. I shall be teaching you lot potions for the next seven years." Everything she said came out in a hiss or a whisper. Her cobalt eyes seemed to be slanted, like she was of Asian heritage.

The class was spent by taking notes on the things they were going to learn. When going over the names of certain potions, Tom listed all the ingredients he had read about over the summer. He could tell this was going to be an easy class.

At the end of class, Tom saw Aine rummaging inside her pack.

"Here," she said. She handed him a piece of toast and a sausage. "You've got to be starving."

Tom thanked her and ate the bit of food. He actually wasn't hungry, but why waste perfectly good food, especially when someone went through the trouble to get it for you?

The next class they had was Herbology. Tom looked at the dirt in disgust.

"You had better get used to it. This is a class you'll probably end up taking for the rest of your years here at Hogwarts," said the professor, a young man.

Instead of digging in the ground himself, Tom promised to pay his partner to do the gopher work. The pay was homework, and Tom was very proficient at completing homework. After Herbology were other classes, and Tom was already starting to get bored. Until he entered the defense against the dark arts classroom.

(A/N: THIS STORY HAS COME BACK TO LIFE!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!)