"It is with our passions as it is with fire and water. They are good servants, but bad masters." - Aesop
Mudblood.
Tom learned the meaning of the word rather quickly.
Mudblood.
Despite his convictions regarding his father, as an orphan he had no way of really knowing if the man was a wizard or not, and the ambiguity of it all was enough for him to become a pariah amongst his Housemates. There were loud complaints made in Tom's earshot, eyes firmly planted on him as they bemoaned there was no such thing as a re-Sorting.
In those letters shared with Ixchel over the summer, they spoke only briefly of those with non-magical heritage and some wizarding folks' sentiments regarding it all. 'Oh, some of the old families here have horrid opinions on those with muggle origins, it's rather ghastly, honestly.' She discussed it all in the way the rich speak of poverty. Sympathetic, but in a detached way with no real fire. She was too far removed to truly understand.
Everything had started out wonderfully which made his Housemate's behaviour all the more upsetting! After departing the boats, they were met by Deputy Headmaster Dumbledore; his outfit even more outlandish than what he had worn when visiting Wool's to speak to Tom about attending Hogwarts. He appeared genial, if still a bit serious as he explained the House system. Tom already knew it all through Ixchel, of course.
Hers was the only other sorting to which he had paid any mind. She had been sorted into Ravenclaw after a minute's pause, and he watched her take a seat at the table of blue and bronze. Maybe he would be sorted into Ravenclaw with her and he could keep her near, he considered. Blue and bronze were fine colours; colours the King would wear.
When it was at last his turn to sit before the assembly, the Sorting Hat had barely touched his head when it shouted, "Slytherin!"
His eyes shot to Dumbledore. His expression was welcoming and mild, and Tom walked to the far end of the hall where the Slytherin table stood, draped under green and silver banners, his chin raised and a proud smile on his lips as he was raucously cheered.
Tom's first week of term at Hogwarts had breezed by; he was home. Tom believed he finally understood what it felt like to fit comfortably in one's own skin. He felt the power in that.
Easily one of the most wondrous things about Hogwarts was the food. The students were served dessert after dinner every day. Bread and Butter pudding, Rhubarb Crumble, Eton Mess, Jam Roly Poly, Bakewell Tarts, and everything else Tom could possibly imagine. Every breakfast, lunch, and dinner a feast fit for royalty was laid out upon the tables, magicked into existence. Tom quickly learned to hide his gusto after seeing the other students treating the meals with nonchalance. Whilst he enjoyed it, Tom could not simply ignore the bitterness that squeezed his throat. He thought back to Wool's and compared the nights he went to bed with his stomach cramping with hunger to the lavish meals before him now. The fact that a number of the other students didn't finish what they placed on their plates was outright sickening to Tom.
He was relieved and deeply pleased with how easily he grasped his classes. In the stillness of the night at Wool's, he had practiced his spell-work with an almost religious fervour. With Ixchel's letters running through his head, he whispered words- their meanings researched in Wool's shabby Latin dictionary, and waved pencils and later his wand according to the instructions in his stacks of books.
He had been rigorous about learning and memorising as much as he could, asking every question that came to his mind- hoarding information, fearful that no matter how much information he acquired, or how many spells he mastered, it wouldn't be enough to match those who had been born and raised in this world he had only just discovered. How he hated playing catch up!
However, he was usually the first of his classmates to master a new spell or finish a potion and the first with his hand in the air to answer the questions posed by his professors.
The homework they were assigned in class was uncomplicated and he was astonished to hear his fellow first years whinge about the work. How could they not see they got to study magic, not had to study it? He wondered if those born to magic would never be able to truly appreciate how amazing it all precisely was. The assignments were simple and he was often well ahead of deadlines, but... he always made sure to take his time.
Tom had not realised coming into Hogwarts just how segregated the four Houses of the school really were. Meals were eaten with one's House, common rooms were in-House only, students were inclined to sit divided by House lines in class, and first years could not leave the grounds to spend time together at Hogsmeade. His opportunities to see other students outside of Slytherin seemed few and far between.
So he set an easy rhythm working on his assignments, as studying in the library was one of his only chances to spend any time with the girl who had introduced him to his birthright, recognised his importance. They never spoke of seeking each other out but more days than not, one of them would be sitting alone at one of the expansive, dark wood tables, books and parchment spread out in organised chaos and they would casually move the satchel placed on the seat beside them to the floor when the other came into view. Occasionally on days he arrived after her, she would already be seated with a few of her roommates. He would give his false smile that never reached his eyes to the other girls and sit at a nearby table, making sure Ixchel saw and acknowledged him. He was used to sharing, but that didn't mean he liked it.
Still, things seemed perfect, as they had never before been for him. So when vicious things started to trickle through his happy haze, He should have known somehow, should have sensed the shift in the Slytherin dormitory before the dam burst. He should have kept his guard up as he had always done before. The comfort of Hogwarts, a comfort he was unaccustomed to had lowered his defenses.
Rosier, one of Tom's roommates, shot him a distrustful look over the pages of a letter from his parents he had since finished reading. "There's never been a single Riddle anywhere at all in the Wizarding World. I asked Father about you. No Riddles."
"Wha-?" Tom blinked, feeling off-kilter by Rosier's comment.
"What are you? You're clearly not a pureblood, so that leaves half-blood or mudblood. So which is it?"
His eyes narrowed, He didn't like the sound of that last word and his grip tightened on his quill, the feather losing its sleek shape. He may not have understood the meaning of the term, but he recognised a slur when he heard one. It was said in the same ugly tone as words like Northern Monkey, Gypo, Ikey-mo, or Fairy. "I think I'm a half-blood, but I was raised in a orphanage so-"
"Mudblood!" Lestrange spat, cutting Tom off. He continued, disgust colouring his face. "You would never have been brought to some filthy orphanage if you had a wizarding family! No witch or wizard would ever leave a kid to muggles. You're definitely a mudblood!" He made a show of moving his seat further from Tom.
Whatever camaraderie the others had shown him at the start of term has been abruptly severed entirely. It was made clear that those from the old and influential families wanted nothing to do with him and the others of his House followed suit. Tears had never once helped him, so Tom carefully slipped his hurt away behind anger. Anger was as familiar to him as a mum to others; he knew how to carry anger. And at the times when it felt like it all would become too much, too much for him to keep in and it would all rush out the cracks of his mask, he chased the feelings away by seeking out Ixchel's company. Her cool smile made the persistent burn behind his eyes a little easier to bear.
The Slytherins were a different sort of cruel from Billy Stubbs and his ilk at Wool's and Tom had to grow accustomed to this new opponent. Sometimes, when he sat with his Housemates' backs to him at meal time, or when he closed his bed curtains at night hours after the others, vigilant against any nasty pranks carried out by his roommates, he wished Ixchel was in his House. He thought he was done being alone now that he was where he belonged. He felt a flush of shame and anger at the weakness of those thoughts.
He kept his current dilemma to himself of course. Though his ostracism did not go unnoticed and one day after potions, Professor Slughorn asked him to stay behind in order to assure Tom that he could go to him as Head of House if he had any trouble with his classmates. Tom thanked his teacher and promised he would, but knew he was lying. He wasn't a grass. He was perfectly capable of taking care of his own problems. He suspected Ixchel was aware too. She would look at him with a mild gaze, eyes assessing, but she never said anything. She would look back to her work and ask him questions about his opinion on a transfiguration assignment or herbology text, and he was immensely relieved.
Saturday afternoon after lunch, Tom returned to his dormitory, intent on grabbing his satchel and a few books he had on loan and returning to the library for the rest of the day. Avery, Lestrange, and Rosier were lounging in the common room, seated on the low backed sofas and whispering amongst themselves as he walked past them to get his things. Tom's spine stiffened, hackles raised, and he prepared himself.
His bag was missing. He turned the room upside down, pulling duvets and pillows to the floor, looking under every surface in the shared room, and emptying the trunk at the foot of his bed. Summoning charm after summoning charm yielded nothing and his fury grew until he felt nearly sick with it.
When he returned to the common room, the three boys broke out into snickers.
"Where is it?" He ground out.
Lestrange's smug face made Tom want to claw out his eyes. "You ought to be more careful with your things, Mudblood. Your lot are so careless."
"Filthy things." Rosier drawled. "Anything touched by Mudbloods should really be flushed down a toilet, wouldn't you say?" The boys broke out into vicious laughter once more.
Roughly two hours of searching every loo in the castle brought him to the second floor girl's lavatory, hands balled tightly into fists the entire time. His belongings lay battered and sodden.
Tom was used to being an outcast, used to the whispers, the distaste, the scorn, however as far as he was concerned, their vitriol could not touch him, although he knew he would have to do something about it sooner rather than later. He could not sleep in the same room and eat at the same table with these vipers for the next nearly seven years without doing something about the situation. Ice outs he could tolerate, insults would require retribution but nothing hasty. The vandalism of his belongings, however, was entirely different. To see his things strewn across the tiled floor of the girl's toilets, abused and torn, canvas satchel soaking in loo water, no matter how easily it could all be repaired incited hard, cold fury to well inside him. Family names and bank accounts be damned, he didn't care who it was. It appeared that the Wizarding World had to be taught in turn what he had carefully made clear to the others at Wool's.
He grabbed his belongings, swallowing the lump in his throat and blinking back the burning behind his eyes. Ignoring his revulsion at the chill of wet fabric in his hands, he tried to depart the lavatory as quickly as possible before a girl saw him there and accused him of anything inappropriate or gossiped about him being discovered in the girl's toilet.
As he turned around for the exit, the world around him shifted. Like the feeling of standing up too quickly but everything else tilted, not him. Tom stuttered to a stop and looked around the empty toilets, unsure of what he had just experienced.
He wasn't sure if it was magic, perhaps some ward against intruders? Whilst it didn't feel unwelcoming, it did feel very strange. Was it possibly just his imagination? When he heard nothing but the drip of a leaking tap after a few moments of hesitation, he was drawn back to the present by the moisture of his waterlogged belongings seeping through his robes. He slowly left, uncertain of what had just taken place.
Secreted away in the muggle studies section of the library where students rarely ventured, Tom sat at a solitary table, researching spells to dry the delicate pages of his books. He didn't need anyone to see him like this; weak, and vulnerable.
He thought back to a trip to the London Zoo he had taken with Wool's. Whilst the others hurried off to look at the lions, elephants, and pandas, he spent his day in the reptile exhibit. The snakes spoke of insipid things, but it was so wonderfully deserted, so marvelously empty. He had read one of the plaques in that dark, quiet space stating that cobras were often cannibalistic and would gobble up those smaller than itself. If it was the fate of smaller, weaker snakes to be eaten then Tom would just have to become the most powerful.
The sound of footsteps walking towards his secluded seat raised his hackles. Why couldn't anything go his way!? He gripped his wand tightly. If it was any of his roommates…
She sat down across the table from him, acting as if it was completely normal for the two to sit together in that forgotten corner of the library and that she hadn't spent what must have been at least a half hour searching for him. She breathed a hello, but as she surveyed his belongings her lips pursed.
Tom didn't greet her back, and could feel his face heat up at her seeing him like this. He frowned, and kept his eyes on the pages before him.
"You know, Eztli means blood."
He peered up at her, questioning, but Ixchel's focus was downwards, rummaging through her bag as she spoke.
"It's Nahuatl. We're an old family. Older than wands; when the only magic was blood. Older than many of your poncy Housemates. But not from here, obviously. Never allowed to forget that. My mum tried to pretend that people didn't see us as different, but Socorro and I knew. We're not an English family. In a few generations they'll forget, sure, but not us, no matter how long we live here, and there will always be people who see us as dark and… primitive. Too foreign and too fatherless for the serious purebloods, too many roots in blood magic for the rest.
"I was so relieved Socorro came to Hogwarts before I did. She's… warm. She's friendly, and bold, and makes jokes at the right time. People brighten when they see her, and they cheer her on during quidditch. She's things I'm not."
Ixchel looked self-conscious and Tom was both pleased to see her mask slip in front of him in a way he couldn't imagine it would do so in front of anyone else, and disturbed that it could crack at all.
"People here think of Socorro when they hear Eztli now, not blood. They think of a sunny, talented, and athletic Gryffindor. I'm the little sister of a charming, popular girl, not just a fatherless witch from a foreign family who has clung too long to the old ways."
She slid a book along the table top towards him. Haire Raising Hexes and Pernicious Potions by Albreda Avery.
"But I like to be prepared. I brought it just in case. You may find it interesting."
The harassment from his Housemates died down fairly quickly; Slytherins learned fast, fortunately. In class they were civil and outside of it they left him to his own devices, for which he was glad. No longer did he find his robes muddied and thrown across the dormitory, or his homework destroyed, and the word "mudblood" was never said in his presence again, not after Lestrange broke out in deep purple boils so painful his sobs woke up all of Slytherin as he was taken to the hospital wing.
Madam Jones stated it was an unfortunate delayed reaction from dealing too carelessly with potions ingredients, but Professor Dumbledore began noting him with a wary eye.
Ixchel simply asked which spells he found the most useful.
