The Tale of Tom

Chapter Fifteen: Another Letter

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"Morning, Tom."

"Morning."

"I finally found my way down to the Great Hall without Owen's help," Myron informed his friend, with a wide smile on his face.

"That's good," Tom replied, looking up and giving the sandy-haired boy a smile.

"I see you did too, considering Owen was still in the common room when I left," Myron said, obviously in a good mood.

Tom smiled and didn't tell his friend that he had been able to find his way down to the Great Hall for several weeks now.

"Let's see, what do we have today," Myron said to himself, looking at the first year Slytherin's schedule. "Uggh, we have Binn's today," he told his dark-haired friend. Tom just gave a small smile and continued eating his breakfast. "You're awfully peaceful today," Myron said, noticing his friend's calm demeanor. "I'd be more likely to jump out a window upon hearing I have Binn's than smile."

"I'm sorry, I just feel rather serene today," Tom apologized.

"Oh, I'm not annoyed, I find it interesting," Myron explained.

They both ate their breakfast in silence, with Owen joining them after a small amount of time had passed. As soon as the elder Nex had taken his seat the mail came, in the form of hundreds of owls.

Delano took a place on Owen's head, sticking out her leg and the attached letter. He took it off and offered it to his younger brother who opened it before spreading it out in front of both of them.

Tom offered the owl some of his breakfast, which she gratefully received. He smiled vaguely at the two Nex siblings, who were too busy reading the weekly letter sent by their parents to pay attention to much else. Myron's mother seemed to be very protective of both of her children, as she sent them a long letter every week on the dot. (Tom himself was slightly surprised when it did not arrive yesterday, as it usually came on Mondays).

"Ow!" yelled Tom, accidentally tipping over the goblet he had been lowering slightly for Delano. He quickly righted it, and attempted to clean up the spilled drink with his napkin. "You can have some of my breakfast too, if you're so cross," he spoke to the owl which had pecked his hand so fiercely. In reply, it pecked at his hand again. "Ow! Darn it, that hurt! What do you want?" he asked, knowing that although it was only an owl, it was a wizard owl, which meant it was very intelligent. It stuck out its leg as Delano had done for Owen and Tom noticed a letter attached. Frowning slightly, Tom took of the letter and the owl immediately took flight. Tom silently bit his tongue to keep himself from yelling at the owl to come back, as it had undoubtedly delivered the letter to the wrong person. He opened the letter and, with a bit of surprise, saw that it was actually addressed to him. Tom vaguely wondered if Rose had written to him, although he doubted that she would, despite her promise.

Dear Tom, its rough scrawl said,

First of all, happy birthday! I hope you are doing well at Hogwarts, and I wish you success in the many days to come. That being said, I figured I should take this opportunity to deliver a good bit of news. Rose was adopted the other day! And by that lovely couple you met in late August. So I won't take any more of your time, as I'm sure you're busy with spells to practice and incantations to memorize.

Sincerely,

Miss O'Flannery

Tom blinked a bit and put the piece of paper in his pocked. Well, that explained who it was from. It made sense, of course, no one else knew he was attending Hogwarts. None the less, he still felt slightly disappointed. He wasn't really sure why though, what else could it have been? It was simply a brief business-like note, written because it was something that had to be done, a chore near the bottom of a to-do list.

To his left, the two Nex's were still reading their letter. It seemed to be even longer than usual this week, no doubt full with loving apologies for being a day late. Tom made a half-hearted attempt to clean up the rest of the long-ago spilled pumpkin juice but gave up, deciding to just leave it as a damp orange spot on the clean white tablecloth. Why was he so unhappy all of a sudden? The fact he had been remembered at all should have made him happy. Or maybe he didn't want to be remembered. If he was remembered it meant he had something tying himself to that dark, dismal world. But surely he wouldn't want to severe all ties even if he had a choice, would he? After all, he had lived there for the past 11, no, 12 years.

"Who was the letter from, Tom?"

Tom snapped his head up from its downward position of looking at his plate. "Huh?"

"Was it from your mum?" Myron spoke again.

"Oh, um, yes it was," Tom said quickly looking down at his plate again to hide his embarrassment.

Myron took a bite of a syrup-laden waffle before replying. "She must be really busy to write you so rarely; does she work?"

"Uh, yeah. She..." Tom quickly searched his mind for occupations his imaginary mother could hold. He knew that, in the Muggle world at least, some jobs were closed to women, something he thought unfair. "She sells stuff," he stated. "You know, magical items, with my Dad. They travel around Europe selling stuff. But magic stuff of course. No muggle stuff."

"Sounds interesting. Did you go with them before you were accepted into Hogwarts?"

Tom wanted very badly to say yes, he had been to all sorts of exotic places, but he knew he couldn't successfully fool Myron into believing that. There'd be too many questions he couldn't answer, too many things he simply wouldn't know. He knew his own limitations. So, reluctantly, Tom replied that, no, he hadn't gone traveling with them. Instead he said they arranged it so one of them would always stay home with him. On the rare occasions when they both had to leave, they would leave him with a friend and rush back as soon as he could.

Tom realized about halfway through his story that the letter in his pocket was a direct contradiction to every word he had just uttered. What was worse was that it was written, irrefutable evidence. He had to get rid of it. Maybe he could burn it, ashes can't prove anything. And he had just read up on a fire-producing spell. What was the incantation? Cinder? Inferno? It started with an I, he knew that much, but he couldn't remember anything else. But that'd take a while even if he could remember how to cast it. He'd have to find some out of the way corner where he could burn it without being noticed and there weren't exactly a lot of those in the middle of the day.

Far off, a bell rung, indicating the start of the passing period. Tom picked up his book bag and walked out of the Great Hall with Myron. Quickly making a show of checking his bag, Tom stated that he accidentally left his quill in the Great Hall and rushed back in, against the flow of people. He quickly took out the incriminating scrap of paper and ripped apart the "Dear Tom" part before dropping the rest of it on the Gryffindor's messy table. If there was no name, there was no evidence and no way it could be traced back to him. Tom strode back out of the Great Hall and allowed a small smile to grace his lips as he felt his peacefulness float back to him.


A/N: Yes, I know, bad author, bad author. But at least I updated! I know this chapter is a bit shorter than the other ones so I apologize for that and for taking so incredibly long to update. Oh, on another note, I decided to start doing reviewer responses so scroll down a bit further.

Disclaimer (keep scrolling): I don't own Harry Potter or his world.

Reviewer Responses (yay!):

Okay, because I started doing these when I had already started this story first off I am going to give a BIG thank you to Chantal J, ERMonkey Burner of Cookies, harryptaxd204 and Kuramakicksass for all of their wonderful, WONDERFUL reviews; my inspiration. And thank you also to Shenzee, flutegirl89 and Lilly K for reviewing. But now the specific people—fine, person.

RSegovia: First of all, thank you so incredibly much for reviewing. And don't worry, the orphanage is going to become worse. Also, you certainly make a point about Rose and, truthfully, I'm not entirely happy with the beginning myself. I may rewrite it sometime but right now I'm more concerned about getting out new chapters.