Tom's objective was simple: to find a compartment that already had an occupant—a single occupant—who was also an enrolling first-year. He wanted someone on whom to practise the spells enlisted in 'A Compendium of Elementary Curses yet to be Proscribed by the Wizengamot', a dusty grey tome that faintly reeked of rat poison and sewage. He had purchased this charming treatise from an uncouth little bookshop in one of the dingy little alleys that jutted from Diagon Alley like blighted branches from an old tree.
Tom thought his criteria would be easy to meet, but he traversed two carriages and discovered that most compartments contained either multiple people, or no one at all. The few solitary students Tom found were all older than him, and older students would not do for his experiment. Guinea pigs were not supposed to fight back.
But Tom was not deterred. He went about examining the compartments of the third carriage as he had done the previous two, and soon found something—or rather someone—promising. A plump, freckled solitary boy who curled up on one of the compartment's benches, reading what appeared to be—judging by its lack of illustrations—a muggle novel rather than a spellbook. The boy could not have been much older than Tom; he was a second-year at most. And a reader of novels? Perhaps a muggleborn, and not one who desired power like Tom did. Tom was about to open the door and introduce himself, until—
"… wouldn't hear of it! I thought my suggestion perfectly pertinent, but apparently—"
A collision. A soft, firm, tall body. Tom was violently knocked to the ground.
"Oh! Goodness gracious—I'm so sorry! Are you alright?"
The tall soft body—a towering brunette with overlarge upper teeth—extended its hand and pulled Tom up. Upright, Tom wiped his hand on his jacket; he did not like being touched.
"Do forgive me," the body continued. "I don't know how I didn't see you there."
"She's rather a scatterbrain, isn't she?" rejoined the blonde girl that accompanied Tom's assailant.
Tom examined the scatterbrain. Her brown hair, already unbecomingly thick, fell to her shoulders to form a disorderly mane. Her face was not particularly good-looking; her front teeth really were too large; she had a child's chin; and her large brown eyes were vulgar because they showed sympathy to Tom who despised pity. She wore a crimson cape-cloak over a long yellow sundress; both these articles were colourful and robe-like enough to be magical, but common enough to be muggle. But most of all, she towered over Tom—she was at least a head-and-a-half taller than him, and her hips were wide enough to enclose him twice lengthwise—she must have been at least three years older than him. Tom would not be able to defy her.
"It's quite alright, ma'am," said Tom, gritting his teeth and forcing a smile on his face.
"Ma'am! Oh please don't say that, you make me feel like a crone!" The scatterbrain and her friend exchanged laughs before she took Tom's jacket and straightened it. Tom suppressed a glare; for a girl so big and full of sweet-talk, she certainly lacked all conception of personal space. "Say, what's that book you have there?"
Tom had forgotten about his book. It was on the floor. The scatterbrain casually snapped her fingers to summon it flying to her hands.
"Elementary Curses!" the scatterbrain exclaimed in horror. "Good god! How did such a good little boy like yourself acquire such an evil book?!"
The blonde shrieked as she glimpsed the book's cover. "We shan't let him keep it! But what can we do?"
"We certainly shan't! The most sensible thing would be to hand it to the Headmaster. He'd know how to safely dispose of it."
"Give it here!" Tom cried out in horror, trying vainly to snatch the book from the scatterbrain's clasp. "I bought it at a right proper bookshop! A right proper one, you hear? There's nothing wrong with it!"
"He must've found it in Knockturn Alley," the blonde murmured ominously.
"Don't know where that is!" yelled Tom. "But if you don't give it back, I'll give you a licking!"
The girls went silent and exchanged severe looks. For a moment they appeared to seriously contemplate his threat. Then, they burst into laughter. Tom was furious. He should have realised he was the butt of a ludicrous joke. The book was returned to him and the scatterbrain, clutching her chest with one hand to restrain her incessant giggling, ruffled Tom's hair with the other. "Oh I'm sorry. But you are adorable! He's too adorable, isn't he, Cam?"
"A very dapper little feller he is, Hermione," said the girl called Cam. "Say young wizard, why don't you come sit with us?"
"I'll be going my own way, thank you very much."
"We'll buy you candy."
Tom glared at the blonde who thought he could be won over so easily, and began to walk forward. Hermione stopped him with a hand on the shoulder. Her touch was soft, warm, and unwelcome.
"This one's the studious type, Cammie. He aspires to more in life than the acquisition of confectionery. How about this, lad—sit with us, and I'll give you a book of your choosing from my collection. Any book other than my fifth-year textbooks of course, those I need. I have hundreds."
"She does have hundreds," asserted Cam. "Hermione's the biggest bookworm in Gryffindor; she'd be the second or third biggest if she were in Ravenclaw."
Though Tom's first instinct was to evade these girls who had just deeply humiliated him, he remembered the yearning he felt at Flourish and Blotts—a right proper bookshop, perhaps the rightest and properest one there was on Diagon Alley—where he had discovered dozens of titles he wanted but could not afford. The pennies Professor Dumbledore bequeathed to him had barely sufficed for his wand and robe. He supposed the trip to Hogwarts would not take more than a few hours; he would only have to tolerate the pair of ill-mannered shrews for that duration, before making off with a new spellbook and never seeing them again.
"I suppose we have a deal," said Tom.
Soon, Tom found himself in a compartment with not just Hermione and Cam, but four more members of their cohort—another two girls, and two boys. All the girls tousled his hair and touched his face without asking, while the boys accused him of being a dandy skirt-chaser. Tom learned that Cam's full name was Camomile Brown. Even for a witch her name was ridiculous; there was no tea so delectable as to merit human namesaking. Tom found himself squeezed between Hermione and a girl called Eckersley Riesenkampff. Because the latter was positively frightful—she had a small head covered in pimples, a pale, dour visage, and thin, wire-like blackish hair—Tom found himself leaning into the much prettier scatterbrain. Hermione did not mind this, and all would have been fine and good, had Tom not detested physical contact with others in general. He assiduously washed his hands whenever he so much as accidentally trailed a finger on the dress of a girl at Wool's.
"What's your name, old man?" asked Balthasar Bell, the larger and fairer-looking of the Gryffindor boys in the compartment.
"Tom Riddle."
"You must be muggleborn," observed Septimus Weasley, a ginger. "You'd do well in Gryffindor."
That was the beginning of Tom's aversion to Gryffindor.
Eckersley Riesenkampff made an interjection. "It's a very strange name for a muggle. What do your parents do, Tom?"
"I'm an orphan." Trying to make sure that he did not waver as he said this, Tom spoke with a gravity that quietened the compartment. "My mum died giving birth to me. I've never met my dad."
Tom did not say that his father, too, was called Tom Riddle. He wanted to cultivate an air of mystery.
"Oh, poor thing!" Hermione burst out and gave Tom a hug. Her embrace suffocated him. "You'll feel at home at Hogwarts—I'll see to that."
No thanks, Tom wanted to say as he freed himself from her clasp.
As the train continued northward, the Gryffindors recounted their summers to each other. Tom was simultaneously delighted and disappointed; he indirectly gained knowledge of manifold things from their conversation—servant elves, flying horses, parties with mermaids, firewhisky, monster hunting and so on—but the way they talked reminded Tom of frivolous public schoolboys in London. At one point Bell, Weasley and Camomile Brown discussed 'Quidditch'—the magical equivalent of cricket, a sport with a dozen arbitrary rules that was popular with the mediocre—for an entire hour. Tom saw that Hermione, far from being as sociable as he thought she would be, retreated into a book; she mostly spoke to correct others or ramble on about some abstract point.
Hermione was liable to shift her body about pointlessly as she read. Every few minutes she would adjust her position and skim her bum against Tom's hip to send revolting shivers down his legs. The fabric of her dress was thin and he could feel her posterior flesh in all its warm squishiness when she made these movements; he was as disgusted as he would have been trapped in a small enclosure with a diseased animal. He wanted her to just sit still, and began to heartily regret accepting her deal as she shifted her body for the umpteenth time.
When the trolley witch came, Hermione purchased a dozen things for Tom; he grudgingly thanked her, pocketed half the items as per his instinct to hoard, and delighted himself with a chocolate frog. As he finished the amphibian's last leg, Hermione turned again—this time to raise both her legs onto the bench and fold them sideways, so that the entire circumference of her bottom pressed against Tom's waist. It was an unprecedented motion, and Tom felt he was in the position of a toilet. He would well have been one if not for the infinitesimally thin fabric of the scatterbrain's dress. Though it was not particularly large for a girl her age—a little above average in both rotundity and shapeliness—Hermione's bum was to Tom, on account of his being five years her junior and yet to commence puberty, what the backside of a bear would have been to the average adult man. It utterly dominated him. Hot and plump, it smothered Tom's ribs like a mother hen smothered its eggs.
Tom had never been so revolted in his life, but he could not move. He sought to distract himself by reading his book of curses, but found that his mind could not register words while his flesh registered Hermione's buttocks kneading his torso like two pillows full of hot yoghurt. He wished anyone else in the compartment would tell Hermione to cease encroaching on his space; but everyone appeared indifferent to her antics, with the exception of Weasley, who strangely seemed to look at Tom with envy.
Then, Tom suddenly realised he had a stiffy. A firmer stiffy than he ever remembered having; he might have expected such a thing to happen in the morning, but in the afternoon? His willy was harder than it could have been had he drank a gallon of water without urinating. He realised that Hermione's bottom felt good. Very good. His genital region was tremendously ticklish—like an ocean adjoining a continent, the contact of Hermione's ample backside with his waist produced a stream of ticklishness that went to his nether regions and irrigated its arid pastures. Tom placed his book over his lap so that no one could see his shame, and clenched his teeth in anger and embarrassment. The big stupid scatterbrain had no idea of the pleasure her big stupid bum gave him. She degraded him more through ignorance than anyone had done through malice in years. Tom could not understand himself; the more Hermione made him feel good, the more he hated her and thought her disgusting; the more he hated her and thought her disgusting, the more her bottom seemed like a cushion from the Garden of Eden.
When the train stopped at Hogsmeade Station, Tom sighed in relief as he fled the prison of involuntary pleasure he had been confined to for seven long hours. Yet as he disembarked from the Hogwarts Express, he felt a curious sense of deprivation upon taking the fresh Scottish air—for hours Hermione had scratched an itch he did not know he had, and now he was itchier than he had ever been in his life.
"SLYTHERIN!"
Hermione felt a pang of disappointment as little Tom Riddle made his way to a table that was not her own. Though he strode to the table of snakes with an air of satisfied self-assurance, Hermione thought that he surely would have preferred to be with her.
"Did you expect anything else?" asked Balthasar Bell, noticing Hermione's discontent.
"I don't see why he shouldn't have been a Ravenclaw or one of us."
"He's too morose to be either." Balthasar shrugged.
"Morose? You only say that because he's got black hair."
"Don't be silly. The lad grew up without parents and it shows. He mistrusts everyone."
Hermione turned around to face the Slytherin table, and discovered Tom Riddle intently looking at her. She gave him a smile, but he was apparently so absorbed in his thoughts that he did not notice her at all. His pureblood housemates were all utterly indifferent to him—it was as though he simply wasn't there—and perhaps this was the best one could expect from them. Hermione felt her heart sink. She gave him one last pitiful stare and turned back.
"Can you imagine being a muggleborn in Slytherin? If he mistrusts everyone like you say, it'll only get worse for him there. He deserves better."
"He'll find a way I reckon," said Balthasar. "Lad's got a special curiosity for curses. Don't recall myself having such a penchant at his age."
"But who's going to teach him to trust others? To teach him that the world's not such a sombre place? Without these two morals one can hardly be happy in life. Who's going to teach him love?"
"You can do that. I've got better things to do with my time."
Hermione glared at Balthasar. "I've always had better things to do with my time than write your essays for you."
"I meant no offence, Granger."
"Sounds like someone's got a new passion," smirked Septimus. "He's rather young for you, don't you think Hermione?"
"You can hardly fault her." Camomile came to Hermione's defense. "He is the cutest boy among the new batch, and his moroseness gives him flair."
Camomile wasn't wrong, and Hermione shamefully wondered whether Tom Riddle's good looks affected her judgement of him. She liked to believe her interest was purely compassionate; but there was something unbearable about the idea of a handsome, talented muggleborn orphan being mercilessly thrown into the viper-pit of the Slytherin Dungeon. Only two results were possible. They would torment him so badly that all his talent and feeling for life would be annihilated, leaving behind nothing but an automaton vaguely capable of magic; or he would seek to become master of the hell in which he had been cast, and emerge from his persecution with nothing but venom in his veins, to become an incarnation of the worst of that house. Both existences were miserable—the former was much more probable—and Hermione felt an overwhelming urge to protect the little boy she had coddled on the train from both.
