Chapter 20

20 October, 1940 History of Magic Classroom, Second Floor, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Dorcas silently doodled pictures of Bing in the margins of her notes. She listened to Professor Binns as he talked about the founding of Hogwarts and the witches and wizards who were responsible for the education she was now receiving.

Her mind kept returning, as it had over the last month, to the mysterious photograph that she'd seen in the paper of the man who looked like Tom and bore the same name. After reading and rereading the short article about the man's mysterious disappearance and reappearance Tom handed her the yellowing pages of the old newspaper. Dorcas offered to let him have page eleven. She thought he'd be curious to find out more about the man, but she had been disappointed. He'd studiously avoided the topic of the old article or the other Tom Riddle ever since.

Dorcas knew the Muggle in the paper was very likely a relative. If he'd merely born a resemblance to Tom, or carried the same name, she could have written it off as a coincidence. As he looked exactly like her friend and shared the same name, she knew it couldn't be ignored. But, Dorcas also knew that if Tom wanted to leave the mystery to languish unsolved, that was his prerogative.

She wondered if it was the fact that the man was a Muggle that bothered Tom. She remembered him confiding in her that he harbored a hope to be connected to a Wizarding lineage. Her suggestion that he could be the first wizard of his family had not sat well with him. She supposed this could be because his childhood in a Muggle orphanage had left little to recommend Muggles as a society. She remembered Tom explaining that magic had become an open door to him. She knew his goal was to walk through it and shut the Muggle world firmly behind it.

But, Dorcas thought to herself, there was still the mystery of his mother. Other than dying at the orphanage when he was born and giving him her father's name, there was no information on her. She could be Tom's connection to the Wizarding world. The best place to start would be Little Hangleton. But Tom would not hear of going to the town where the other Tom Riddle resided.

Dorcas knew the story that Binns was outlining just now. Helga Hufflepuff and Salazar Slytherin's monumental difference of opinions concerning who should receive the benefit of magical education. Slytherin abhorred admitting students of Muggle parentage. Dorcas noted that this may be part of the reason the idea of having a Muggle relation sat poorly with Tom, who belonged to his house. Tom never seemed to espouse the pureblood leanings of others in his house (her cousin Gemma included). But neither did he draw attention to his own connections to the Muggle world.

Helga Hufflepuff was of the opposite view. Educating any student who exhibited magical talent was her priority. The circumstances of family or birth meant nothing to her. Dorcas thought about the students of Hufflepuff House. Many of them were Muggle born witches and wizards including Anneliese Epping and Beau Haywood.

Godric Gryffindor famously sided with Helga Hufflepuff in the disagreement, leading to one of the most notorious Wizarding duels in history.

"Sir," Adelaide Johnson, a Gryffindor sitting in front of Dorcas and Cherry, asked, her hand shooting into the air. "Is that why Slytherin created the Chamber?"

Dorcas rolled her eyes.

"The Chamber of Secrets is nothing but sensationalism, Miss Johnson," Professor Binns said dismissively and shuffled his notes.

Dorcas agreed with the professor. She'd never read anything in all of the books in the school library that conclusively proved the existence of such a place. The only mention of the Chamber she'd come across was in the form of a memoir of a raving lunatic of a witch called Morella Hoyle. She insisted she'd found the entrance of the Chamber in a cave at the foothills of the mountains just outside of Hogsmeade. As it happened, she hadn't discovered the home of Slytherin's legendary monster. She'd found a dragon's den instead.

"This school's existed for a thousand years. Someone would have found a secret chamber that housed a vicious monster by now, don't you think?" Dorcas's roommate, Charys Fletcher, argued.

"A reasonable assumption," Professor Binns conceded, losing all interest in continuing his lecture in favor of the lively debate that had spontaneously cropped up.

Mohit Singh took up the Ravenclaw side of the debate, which appeared to be the more skeptical side. "What kind of monster hibernates for a thousand years?"

A Gryffindor boy whom Dorcas believed was named Dane Parker swiveled in his seat to face Mohit. "It could be different generations of the same type of creature that live down there."

"Down where?" Mohit opined incredulously.

Cherry's elbow slipped off of her desk and she jolted awake. Dorcas slid her notes closer to Cherry so she could copy. Cherry muttered thanks while stifling a yawn.

"I don't know. Wherever the Chamber is," Dane defended.

Dorcas smiled, finding his flawed logic funny.

"There is no Chamber," Charys said exasperatedly.

"I bet there is," Adelaide argued.

"It's the Giant Squid in the lake!," Grady Teller exclaimed. "That's Slytherin's monster!" His Gryffindor friends laughed.

"What is happening?" Cherry asked under her breath to Dorcas.

Dorcas didn't take her eyes off of the action, but replied to Cherry in a hushed tone, "Adelaide asked about the Chamber of Secrets and set off a debate. The conspiracy theories are spiraling out of control."

Professor Binns's voice cut through the debaters. "Miss Clerey, Miss Weasley," his voice carried over the others, causing the rest of the class to focus their attention on the pair. "Perhaps you would like to share your opinions with the class?"

Cherry didn't miss a beat. "I vote for the monster!" she proclaimed with confidence, flinging her hand into the air for affect.

Some Gryffindors clapped.

Professor Binns and the class shifted their eyes to Dorcas. She swallowed.

"Well," she answered reluctantly. "Slytherin invested time and resources into the school, like the other founders. Why would he want to create a means of destroying the very place he worked so hard to build?"

"Here, here!" Mohit shouted in agreement and thumped his desk.

Professor Binns nodded and seemed to decide to bring the debate to a conclusion.

"We may never know of the Chamber's whereabouts, or what monster lurks in its confines, or even if it's all just hullabaloo. But what the facts of history do tell us is this: Salazar Slytherin parted ways with the other founders. Descendants of his moved to America and built another school for magical children."

"It probably has a monster's lair inside of it as well," Dane said in an audible whisper.

Class ended leaving Dorcas to wonder if Slytherin's Chamber was more of a metaphor than a real place. The very idea of a hidden lair seemed to captivate gullible generations endlessly searching for proof of its existence. How many more Morella Hoyle's will climb excitedly into a hillside cave only to be reduced to ash in dragonfire?

:::

1 February, 1958 Janus Thickey Ward for Long-Term Spell Damage, Saint Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries

Dorcas was in her office catching up on patient files and the ever-expanding cache of memories waiting for her to review. Not only was she responsible for studying memories drawn from patients at the hospital and her own home-based practice, but she was now receiving memories drawn by people that were not referred to her. They'd simply taken it upon themselves to extract memories and send them to her by owl to analyze.

These unsolicited memories would be returned to their owner immediately by Dorcas's assistant, Gwen. They were requested kindly to make an appointment.

Surveying the stack of patient files and the accompanying memories caused Dorcas to question her own sanity for wanting to have another baby. Cal was right. Where would she find the time for a third child between hospital rounds, counseling sessions, memory analysis, and research? She was out of her mind.

Shoving the self doubt aside, Dorcas returned to the Pensieve sitting on the desk in her fourth floor office. She uncorked the memory of Gus Hawkins and poured it into the gray mist. It swirled and mingled with the silvery memory, the silhouette of a body lying on the pavement floated to the surface. Dorcas had a dizzying sensation of deja vu when she saw it.

Placing her face to the cool surface of the liquid memory, Dorcas felt the falling feeling of plunging into the recollection. She was on a dark London street outside of the Ministry of Magic visitor's entrance. Gus was in front of her walking in the direction of a commotion.

There was only a little light to see by. The streetlamp nearest to Gus flickered almost imperceptibly before extinguishing altogether. The pavement was slick. It had been raining, but now only a light mist remained. Dorcas couldn't experience the cold for herself in the memory, only the feeling that Gus had of the cold. It was a chill that gave the merest impression of fall. This was an evening in early October, as Dorcas recalled.

"You there!" Gus shouted.

In the distance ahead of Gus, Dorcas could just make out a huddled figure in a heavy cloak. As the hood turned toward Gus, Dorcas could see why this memory had been incorrectly identified by Gus as a nightmare. The hood obscured all features of the wearer except his (or her, Dorcas supposed) eerily gleaming red eyes.

Gus stepped back reflexively before drawing his wand.

"What are you doing?" Gus challenged.

A burst of bright light struck Gus's right hand where his wand was held aloft. Gus managed to hang on to the wand, but the snap of wood was unmistakable. Gus was already mid-incantation when the mysterious figure had magically snapped his wand almost in half.

"Stupify!" Gus said, in that same moment, the hooded figure moved, dodging to the left to escape the spell. Dorcas could see the body of a man sprawled on the pavement beside the figure.

As Dorcas registered recognition of the features and the light brown hair of the prone man, she also felt the jolt of Gus's own Stunning Spell being cast backward from the broken wand and throwing Gus to the ground. A sickening smack announced that Gus's head preceded the rest of him to the pavement.

The memory went dark when Gus was knocked unconscious and Dorcas ascended from the pavement and into her own office in the Long-Term Spell Damage Ward once more.

"You're needed, Healer Meadowes," Gwen's urgent voice snapped her focus back to the present. The image of the dead man lying on the wet sidewalk vanished. "Mrs. Abernathy, again. Seizures."

Dorcas left the memory of the hooded and red-eyed figure swirling in the Pensieve and followed Gwen out onto the ward.

:::

20 October, 1940 Library, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Dorcas was distracted throughout dinner. She wasn't captivated so much as some of the more impressionable students in the class about Salazar Slytherin's secret chamber beneath the school, but about something else that Professor Binns had said.

She kept revisiting the History of Magic teacher's words about the school in America whose provenance was owing to Slytherin's descendants. She didn't remember ever reading about a connection between Hogwarts and another magical institution of learning.

She sat with two references in front of her. One was a book she'd seen many times open in front of Tom. It was a large genealogy text that chronicled all of the oldest wizarding houses in Britain. The other was a massive compendium of Wizarding education in the British Empire.

First Dorcas looked up schools in America. There were some smaller, less formal institutions centered around Native American settlements and then there was Ilvermorny. The school sat atop Mount Greylock in Massachusetts concealed cleverly by many enchantments and tricks of the eye. A constant crown of fog never seemed to slip from the hilltop.

Dorcas found the story of the school's founding and its founders. Isolt Sayre and James Steward established the school in the seventeenth century. Steward was, to Dorcas's amazement, a Muggle. How egalitarian. And quite unexpected for a descendant of Salazar Slytherin to marry a person who wasn't a pureblood wizard, let alone partner in founding a place of magical learning together.

Pushing the massive compendium of Wizarding education aside, she slid the genealogy text closer and opened it. The Slytherin family tree was extensive and took up fifteen pages, bearing many branches. Dorcas had to hunt among the forks and twigs and leaves to find the name Isolt Sayre. There she was, represented as a leaf on a twig that was labeled William Sayre. Following the twig to a thicker Sayre branch joined to another branch named Gaunt.

The Sayre and Gaunt branches connected to a massive oak trunk with roots that bore into the ground in the form of snakes. The trunk had a decorative crest carved into it and the ornate letters of the Slytherin moniker above that.

Below the roots that terminated in the heads of snakes was a short paragraph that enumerated the Slytherin family traits.

The line of great wizards of the Slytherin family date back to the conquests of Hadrian in Britain. The family characteristics favor dark hair and brown eyes. Not all members of the noble house of Slytherin are gifted in Parseltongue and Legillimens, however, the traits manifest themselves in the bloodline every generation or two.

Dorcas's finger rested on the leaf that bore the Ilvermorny founder's name.

"Sayre," Dorcas repeated to herself.

She wondered if Callum Sayre in her cousin Gemma's year could belong to this family. He was a Slytherin, but he did not have dark hair and eyes as the family traits would suggest. His hair was light brown. She wished there was a picture of Isolt in the books splayed in front of her. Maybe the Sayres didn't have as strong a familial resemblance as some of the other branches of the family.

She traced her finger from the leaf back through the Sayre branch to where it forked with the next closest Slytherin sub-branch, the Gaunts.

One leaf on the Gaunt branch was labeled Gormlaith, a twig further down was named Corvinus. Unfortunate names, Dorcas thought. Then she considered her own name and chose to pass no further judgment. Down the Gaunt branch, Dorcas stopped short at a collection of twigs and leaves. One twig caught her attention: Marvolo.

"More research?" Tom's voice broke into Dorcas's thoughts.

"Yes," Dorcas said as Tom took his customary seat to her left. "Well, not on Wingate in any case. I wanted to learn more about something Professor Binns said in class today."

"What did he say?" Tom asked, removing books, quill, parchment, and ink from his bag as he listened.

Dorcas relayed the details of the lesson to Tom and explained that she knew most of what the professor had outlined save for the detail about Slytherin's descendant and Ilvermorny.

"I assumed it would be a descendant that wanted to make the Slytherin aim of a pureblood school a reality and discovered something entirely different."

Tom nodded with interest, but did not seem to share her surprise.

"But, you already knew about the Sayres, didn't you?" Dorcas asked.

He shrugged in response as he flipped through Standard Book of Spells, Grade 3. "I've combed through that book several times," Tom said, pointing his quill at the genealogy that was opened to the Slytherin lineage.

"So you've seen this?" Dorcas said pointing to the name on the page under the Gaunt branch that gave her a shock.

Tom shrugged again as his eyes darted to the name Marvolo under Dorcas's index finger. "What about it?"

Dorcas didn't know why Tom was behaving as if he suddenly didn't care about finding his family. It was as if the man who shared his name and his face in the paper had somehow robbed him of any interest. Infuriatingly, it had done the opposite for Dorcas.

"Tom," Dorcas said in an exasperated tone. "It's your name. The name your mother gave you."

Tom took the great tome from the table in front of her. She felt a combination of relief and excitement. Finally, she'd reignited some of the interest he'd once had in finding out who he was.

But he began flipping pages. "Black, Hufflepuff, Manderly," he rattled off ancient houses as he flipped to each one and pointed out names on trees. "Even Rackharrow," Tom said, pushing the book back to her, open to her own family's tree. "It's not that uncommon of a name in Wizarding families."

She peered at the Rackharrow tree, designed to look like a sprawling willow. She found Urquhart, Tytos, her own grandfather, mother, and uncles. About halfway between Tytos and her own mother's leaf was another Marvolo.

"We can investigate each one and eliminate them systematically," Dorcas said, unwilling to give up on Tom's quest to know his family.

"Just drop it," Tom said finally.

He turned to his school work and Dorcas closed the books she'd been pouring over. Pushing them to the corner of her table, she took out her Transfiguration text and her notes from yesterday's demonstration of metal to nonmetal transformation.

She wanted to say more to Tom. She wanted to tell him not to give up hope. But he'd been morose ever since that face had stared up at him from the paper.

:::

1 February, 1958 Watermead, Aylesbury

Dorcas was unable to ignore the exhaustion she felt at the end of each busy day. Most nights she was asleep on the couch before dinner dishes could be cleared up. Cal didn't complain. He washed dishes, folded laundry, bathed and put Wren to bed every night.

She wouldn't hear of scaling back her responsibilities at the hospital. Instead, Cal was focusing on her home psychiatry practice. After kissing Wren goodnight, Dorcas and Cal continued the conversation they'd started over dinner.

"Those cases are less emergent. No one would be in grave danger if you closed shop for seven months," Cal reasoned, rubbing Dorcas's right foot.

Dorcas reclined on the couch, her feet in her husband's lap. She was finding it difficult to maintain the high ground when Cal's expert fingers kneaded the balls of her sore feet like that.

"Seven months!" Dorcas exclaimed, careful not to raise her voice and wake their sleeping daughter and Theresa's sleeping son down the hall. "What if I continue with it until the last trimester?"

Cal scoffed. "Apparently you have a very short memory. Remember the headaches and the nausea you had through the second trimester with Wren?"

"I helped Theresa through my home practice. She wouldn't have her son if I hadn't testified on her behalf," Dorcas argued.

Cal nodded, humoring her. "And I know she's very grateful for your help. But you can't help everyone Dorcas. You're only one person. The world won't fall to pieces if you take time off."

Dorcas opened her mouth to argue but Cal continued.

"And remember the day that your office was broken into? What if you'd been home just then? Do you think Muybridge would hesitate to-"

"We don't know it was Muybridge," Dorcas cut him off. She'd heard the what-if-you'd-been-killed-and-your-daughters-lost-their-mother argument before. She was well aware of how the break-in had unsettled Cal. She had been just as upset. She still was. But she would not be intimidated.

"I warned you that another baby would mean compromises to your career," Cal said. "I'll always be there to help you and support you in any way I possibly can. You know I will. But you'll have to cut back. I know you want that baby to be safe and healthy just like I do."

Dorcas closed her eyes and conceded. She knew he was right. She felt Cal's hand rest on her belly. She placed her hand over his. As annoying as these reality checks were, she was incandescently happy that the temporary closure of her practice and the pared back hours at the hospital would eventually lead to a wonderful little addition to her family.

She didn't know how long she'd been asleep when she saw the flashing red eyes under a dark hood crouched on a deserted London street at night. It jolted her awake and she reflexively sat up, breathing heavily, her heartbeat in her throat.

"What is it, Clerey?" Cal asked, anxiously hovering over her. "Do you feel any pain? Is it the baby?"

Dorcas shook her head to reassure him that the baby was fine, that she was fine. But she couldn't make the words come out to explain what she'd seen behind her eyelids as she slept.

She was spared an explanation as Theresa and Gideon came through the front door. They'd gone on three dates in the past three weeks. They'd clearly had a good time as both of them were smiling like idiots.

Their expressions dissolved into worry when they saw Cal bending over Dorcas solicitously.

"Is everything alright?" Theresa asked cautiously.

"Yes," Dorcas said, pushing herself up to a sitting position. "I was just napping and had a bad dream." She looked pointedly at Cal, signaling him not to say anything more.

:::

"Do you remember that day back in October when I saw that man in the paper who'd died? I thought he looked like someone we went to school with?" Dorcas was buttoning her flannel nightgown. Cal brushed his teeth in the bathroom.

He ducked back through the door and spoke around his toothbrush. "No. Who died?"

Dorcas pulled down the covers and climbed into bed. "It was in the Muggle paper, The Times, I think. It looked like Callum Sayre, but the papers just said it was a homeless man."

Cal nodded and climbed into bed next to her.

"I think he's connected to my patient at the hospital," Dorcas continued. "I think he saw the man that looked like Sayre being murdered."

"Is that what startled you earlier tonight? Your patient's memory?" he pulled Dorcas closer to him and she rested her cheek on his chest.

She nodded, but didn't say anything else.

"Do you want me to get you a Sleeping Draught?" he asked, always a physician.

"No," Dorcas said, yawning to emphasize her insistence that she didn't need it.

Cal kissed the top of her head. "I love you," he whispered, holding her tighter for a moment.

"I love you too," Dorcas responded.

She luxuriated in the truth of that statement, knowing that things could have been so different in her life if Cal had not always loved her so sacrificially. She was relieved every time she responded "I love you too" to understand in her own heart how valid that phrase was. They were tethered by the strongest bond of love. Their two children were living proof of it. Well, soon to be three children. The realization made Dorcas giddy and impatient. She wanted to meet number three terribly. Seven months was an interminably long time to have to wait.

She was lulled to sleep by the warmth of Cal's presence next to her and the gentle rhythm of the rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek.

:::

21 October, 1940 Second Year Girls' Dormitory, Ravenclaw Tower, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Dorcas couldn't sleep. She lay awake staring at the inside of the curtains drawn around her four poster bed. When she had finally dozed off, she was awakened, it seemed, only moments later by visions behind her eyelids of children being tortured into exhibiting any sign of magical ability. Since visiting Hattie Finnigan and learning the awful truth of Wingate Institution, she'd been having similar nightmares.

When she wasn't losing sleep over tableaus of torture, she was consumed with the mystery of Tom's parents. The knot seemed to at last be unraveling and yet, the closer they got to real answers, the more Tom retreated from them.

Giving up the pretense of sleep, Dorcas threw back her covers and drew the curtains back as quietly as she could. She descended the stairs to the common room in her bare feet, thinking that she only meant to go and sit by the fire for a while until she felt tired again.

Bing was not in her dormitory or in the common room. But that was not unusual. He usually roamed the school at night. Ratter, Jonas had called him. He was probably in the dungeons right now looking for mice.

Instead of sitting by the fire, which was still burning brightly at one end of the common room, Dorcas's feet carried her out of the door and into the fourth floor corridor. She did not feel the cold stone beneath her feet, or the chill of the drafty corridor through her flannel nightgown. She would walk for a little while until she felt tired. Then she would go back to her bed. It was very early on a Thursday morning and she would have a full day of classes in a matter of hours.

She descended the stairs and came to the next landing. Without thinking about a destination or even about areas to avoid she continued to walk aimlessly. She realized too late that she'd chosen the third floor corridor and was standing directly in front of the Fat Lady's portrait that guarded Gryffindor Tower.

"You'd better get back to bed, young Miss. Before she comes back. She'll have half a dozen teachers after you in a blink," a voice spoke to her from somewhere above her and to the right. A wizard in a purple hat huddled over a massive cauldron stirring endlessly in one of the paintings on the wall. He looked at her sternly.

She looked at the Fat Lady's portrait and was relieved to find it empty. She nodded and thanked the wizard in the adjacent painting and moved on hurriedly. Once clear of the view from the massive but empty frame, she slowed her pace a little and turned a corner.

At the Trophy Room she spared a glance at the plaque that listed the war dead. More names. Dorcas moved on, not wanting to see whose names had been added. Not that she would know any of them.

She was almost to the end of the corridor, internally debating whether she should turn back when something flashed from inside of a classroom. The door was open and the flame of a torch on the wall behind her was reflected in the large expanse of a mirror with an ornate frame. Dorcas almost passed the room by after identifying that the flash of light she'd seen was just a mirror's reflection of a torch when she noticed a lone figure sitting at the base of the mirror.

"Tom?" she whispered.

He turned to look at her but said nothing. He was petting Bing in his lap absently with his fingertips.

She entered the classroom and looked around. There were desks and chairs stacked in one corner. Bookshelves and other discarded furniture was stacked along the opposite wall. The classroom had the distinct air of disuse.

She came to stand next to Tom. He looked down, rested his hand on her right foot. Until she felt the warmth of his palm, she hadn't realized how chilled she was.

Tom finally spoke. "You should get back to your bed. You're going to catch a cold."

She sat on the floor beside him in answer. She was dismayed to find that his morose attitude hadn't left him.

"I couldn't sleep," she explained, reaching over to her cat and petting him. The traitor merely looked at her but remained on Tom's lap.

"Why couldn't you sleep?" he said. He took off his uniform jumper as he asked this and handed it to Dorcas.

She slipped it over her head and threaded one arm and then the other through the sleeves, immediately pleased with the warmth it provided. She noticed the scent of pine that she associated with him. It was a comforting smell.

"Thinking about Wingate. It was such a terrible place. Now I know what happened there, but I can't change it or do anything about it. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with the things I've found out." To her, voicing her frustration and hopelessness out loud sounded melodramatic.

"Maybe you should confront it," Tom suggested as he stroked Bing from head to tail. The cat purred and rubbed his whiskers against Tom's knee. Dorcas got the impression that the two spent a lot of time together. They were friends.

"How?" Dorcas asked.

Tom looked at her. "Go there. Stand in the place that destroyed your family. Take the power away from it."

"Go to Birmingham?" It sounded more impossible than going to London to meet Hattie Finnigan.

Tom shrugged. "It's not that far. Closer than London at any rate."

Dorcas considered it but didn't argue. She wasn't sure if she wanted to see the horrible place where her uncle and countless others had been tortured. The thought of it gave her a sickening feeling that lodged in her throat.

"What about you? Shouldn't you confront the thing that's eating you?"

Tom looked away from her. She thought she saw him roll his eyes.

"I'm serious, Tom. How long have you been searching for any small clue about your family? And now you've got a huge lead and you want to bury it. I don't understand."

Tom didn't speak for a long time. Dorcas sat next to him uneasy. She stared at their reflection in the mirror feeling regret for being so blunt with him.

He looked up and into the mirror as well, but Dorcas could tell that he saw something other than their reflections there.

"When I look into this mirror," he finally said. "I see myself standing with countless other people. Some of them have my eyes, or the same shape to their face. Many of them have the same hair color. There's hundreds, perhaps thousands of them standing there. But it's not about what I see as much as what I feel when I look into this mirror."

Dorcas studied their reflection. She could not see what Tom was describing in the frame.

"I feel like I belong. I know that this is my family. I know that it's a powerful magical family that stretches back many generations."

Dorcas looked from her reflection to Tom sitting next to her. Her brow was crinkled in confusion.

"That man in the paper I gave you," Tom's voice had a bitter edge to it. "He's not part of that family. He's not magical. He's not my kin."

Dorcas wanted to argue. If Tom had aged twenty years, he would be identical to the man in the paper. He also shared the same name. Dorcas was certain that this was Tom's father. She couldn't fathom why Tom would want to deny a flesh and blood parent; a living family member in order to sit in front of this mirror and fantasize about a family that didn't exist.

"Tom, maybe the man in the paper doesn't know about you. If you just met him, there's no way he could mistake you. You're his son, I know it."

"He's not my family. This is my family," Tom replied fiercely.

"You thought your parents were dead," Dorcas persisted. "But your father is still alive."

"Drop it, Birdie," Tom said, seething. His eyes flashed and Dorcas knew he was angry. She was reminded of the time she'd startled him when he was sleeping. She recoiled at the memory of pain when he'd grabbed her.

He stood, dumping Bing unceremoniously on the ground. The cat trotted off indignantly.

"You should get back to bed before you catch your death," Tom said before walking out of the classroom. He made it sound like a threat instead of an entreaty for her wellbeing.

She watched him leave. He was being so stubborn. If Dorcas didn't have any living parents, had grown up in an orphanage like Tom, she'd want to know about the person who shared her visage and her name. She'd have to at least rule out the possibility of kinship. She didn't understand his reticence.

Turning back to the mirror, she inched over into the space that Tom had vacated moments before. Now that she was dead center to the frame, the reflection changed.

Dorcas saw herself, older standing next to Tom. Tom was around the same age as his father (Dorcas had come to think of the man in the paper this way unconsciously). Between them was a little girl. She was a blend of Tom's features and her own. She knew this was their child. Tom looked happier in that reflection than she'd ever seen him in real life. She was beaming from the mirror's reflection as well.

Well, now she knew for certain that this mirror only reflected fantasy. Dorcas knew deep inside of her that this was a scene that would never become reality.

Tom's dream of belonging to generations of pureblood wizards in an illustrious line of magical ability was probably just as false.

:::

Dorcas woke the next morning feeling groggy. She wondered if she would ever have a peaceful night's sleep again after the stories that Hattie had told her. Cursing her own curiosity about Wingate, she threw back the curtains of her bed and met the eyes of her roommate June Riley, who was bent buckling the strap on her shoe.

"Where'd you go last night?" she asked Dorcas conversationally.

Dorcas looked around the room. They were alone except for Bing curled up in the window beside Dorcas's bed.

"I couldn't sleep so I went for a walk," Dorcas said, braiding her hair hastily as she scanned the floor for her shoes.

"You went for a walk?" June said, pointedly staring at her as if she had a sign around her neck labeling her a liar.

Dorcas followed June's gaze and looked down at her own nightgown. She was still wearing Tom's jumper that he'd lent her before storming off last night. Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment.

"And during your walk last night, did you decide to change houses, Dorcas?" she laughed as she stood up.

Dorcas's mind raced with plausible explanations for her manner of dress. She could come up with nothing that sounded believable.

"Don't look so worried! Your secret's safe with me." June winked at Dorcas and left the dormitory.

:::

4 February, 1958 London Library, St. James's Square, London

Dorcas sat in the masculine wood paneled space of the reading room in the London Library with newspapers spread out in front of her.

She believed she'd seen the story about the murdered man in the Times and she thought it was early October. She had issues of the Telegraph and the Daily Mail arranged before her as well for good measure.

It did not take her long to find the item she sought. When she saw the banner headline 'Russia Wins Space Race' she remembered that she'd been reading about Sputnik when she'd seen the smaller story that ran on an interior page. She folded back the paper carefully and saw the murdered man staring up at her from the page.

"Hey, Dory," Jonas said, kissing her cheek as he sat down.

"Hey," she answered, returning the kiss and then wiping lipstick from his cheek like a mother hen. "Thanks for meeting me."

"Sure," Jonas said, looking around the vast room. "You know I love libraries!" he said sarcastically.

His eyes returned to her and he studied her. "Are you okay? You seem off somehow."

Dorcas wanted to tell him her news. With her mother and Uncle Morty gone, he was the closest family she had. Letting him in on her secret would make it real in a way that it hadn't become yet.

"Well, Cal and I haven't told anyone else yet," she hedged. She saw Jonas's eyes widen with realization before she'd even finished her sentence. "But we're having another baby."

Jonas whooped with excitement, drawing contemptuous glares from other library goers.

"That's fantastic news!" Jonas exclaimed in hushed tones. "But what a weird location to make such an announcement," he added, staring down a curmudgeonly librarian.

"That's not why I asked you here." Dorcas explained. She slid the newspaper article over to him and waited for him to read it. She resisted the urge to prompt him or lead him to any conclusions. She wanted to see if he recognized the man the way that she had.

"He disappeared about a decade ago," Jonas said to himself. "Sayre." Dorcas watched as Jonas flipped back to page one and checked the date.

"So you think so, too?" Dorcas asked finally. "You think it's Callum Sayre."

Jonas finally looked away from the picture and met her eyes. "I knew him. He dated my sister for years. They were engaged to be married and then he vanished."

"What else do you know about him?" Dorcas probed, leaning closer and keeping her voice low.

Jonas shrugged. "He's a descendant of the founder of Ilvermorny. Always on about his pureblood beliefs. As far as I know, his family and the American branch don't have contact with one another."

He slid the paper back to Dorcas. "It's uncharitable to say so, but I'm glad he disappeared. And I'm glad to learn that he's dead. He was trouble and he dragged Gemma into it with him."

He leaned toward Dorcas. Their heads were bent confidentially close. "I always thought he was the real killer with that Chamber business. Hagrid wouldn't hurt any living creature."

"Do you know if Gemma's seen this?" Dorcas asked, pointing to Callum's picture

Jonas shrugged. "Maybe. We don't talk much. She runs with a pretty fanatical circle."

Dorcas nodded. The Rackharrow family dynamic was fairly complicated. Her Uncle Lysander didn't espouse the pureblood politics of most other patriarchs of ancient Wizarding lines. Jonas was even less inclined to do so now that he was the head of the family. Gemma, on the other hand, was obsessed with bloodlines and keeping magic in the old families. Dorcas knew that this was the main reason that Gemma hated her. Her father, Corbin, was a Muggle-born and her mother, a blood traitor in Gemma's eyes. This made Dorcas a mongrel of the worst sort, unfit to hold a wand.

"Was Callum part of that circle, d'you think?" Dorcas asked.

"Well," Jonas said, "it's all the same people from when we were in school."

Dorcas tried to think back to Gemma's crowd at Hogwarts. Tamsen Podmore was her best friend. From there, she had the expansive circle of acquaintances that any successful socialite may hope to boast. Evlyn Rosier was her beau before she jilted him in favor of Callum Sayre.

"Stone Zabini, Ashley Vane, Rudolphus Lestrange," Dorcas's eyes glazed over as she tried to picture the group of mostly Slytherins.

"Gornack Avery, Shane LeClerc, August Prince," Jonas supplied for her. "And, of course, Tom Riddle."

Dorcas nodded in recognition of the names. The last, Tom Riddle, was the only one she could say she knew well.

"But don't go asking around too much about this, Dorcas," Jonas cautioned. "If his death is in any way connected with that sort, then it's best to stay away from them."

Dorcas reassured Jonas that she wouldn't go looking for trouble with Gemma or her friends.

A/N: Reviews are welcome and appreciated