The "gentle reminder" Dippet had put on the paperwork apparently came in the form of a localized explosion.
Luckily, the finished lesson plans weren't too badly damaged, and Tom was able to send them off just before sunrise. He didn't bother fixing his desk, which now existed as a smoldering pile of ash and splinters on the floor.
Not one fraction of a second after he'd finally collapsed onto his bed, there was a tapping at the window. He ignored it.
Tap tap tap.
He covered his ears.
Tap tap tap.
He put a pillow over his head.
BANG BANG.
The owl was astoundingly impatient and had started throwing itself at the glass in fierce determination. He opened the window, shot the owl a nasty look, which it returned in kind, and took the small scroll from its foot. It hooted its indignation as it left.
There were very few things that Tom was convinced Muggles did better than wizards (because he hated Muggles and thought their general existence was objectively useless), and one of those things was long distance communication. They had a device that could transfer messages across oceans at incredible speed and with impressive efficiency, yet wizards were stuck having to wipe bird droppings off of every single correspondence they sent.
Dear Professor Riddle, he read.
Please advise when you would like to complete your relocation to Hogwarts Castle. I suggest doing so no later than 27th August to allow ample time to acclimate and prepare for the term.
Albus Dumbledore
Deputy Headmaster
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Today was the 27th. Dumbledore had sent the letter today. Why couldn't he just bloody say "today?"
Tom looked around at his still-smoldering flat. There would be no sleeping, apparently.
"I hope this will suffice," said Dumbledore, showing Tom into an enormous set of rooms that sat somewhere between Gryffindor Tower and the third-floor corridor. There was a massive living area, a bedroom with a fireplace, and a bathroom infinitely nicer than anything he had ever used. His new office had two doors: one accessible from inside the flat, and one that opened to the corridor for students to use.
The floor-to-ceiling windows on the east wall flooded the place with bright sunlight as if God Himself were laying down his approval, and Tom turned to Dumbledore with a poorly hidden look of suspicion on his face. "Were these Merrythought's quarters?" he asked.
"Hm? No, they've been vacant for a while now. The last resident didn't care for them for some reason."
There it was. He assumed he would discover that reason at some point, but for now, his very poor twenty-three-year-old self was content with accepting the offer. "This will be fine," he said, trying to hide his excitement about no longer having to live in a building that looked like no one had touched it since it had been bombed in the War. Which it hadn't.
"Excellent. I shall see you at the pre-term staff meeting tomorrow morning at eight. If you should need anything, do not hesitate to find me." He smiled benignly and left.
Tom took his time exploring the rooms, rearranging things and finding places to store his massive collection of banned books. The last resident had apparently been partial to the color yellow because the floor, the curtains, and the bedding looked as if someone had violently vomited lemons all over them. He changed everything, predictably, to a suitably dark shade of green.
By evening he had everything just the way he wanted it, which had taken a while owing to his incessant perfectionism. As a final step, he set his copy of Magick Moste Evile conspicuously on his new desk (so that if Dumbledore ever came into the office, he'd be sufficiently offended), and considered the job done.
After two sleepless nights he was finally, mercifully, able to go to bed.
Tap tap tap.
Tap tap.
He swore loudly and made his way toward the giant windows in the living room, where a small, disheveled-looking owl of some sort was bobbing up and down on the other side of the glass.
"I hate you," he said to the owl when it flew in and promptly made a mess on the window sill, then proceeded to try and bite him every time he reached for the paper tied to its foot.
He unfolded a hastily scribbled note that had some sort of stain on it and smelled strongly of cigarettes.
Lestrange is back. Wants a word. Says he has news. How's school?
-R
The one single thing he was absolutely certain he had made clear to Avery and Rosier was that they should never contact him while he was at Hogwarts.
Lestrange can wait, he wrote back. If you contact me here again, I will kill you both.
He put a curse on the paper for good measure.
On his way to the staff meeting the next morning Tom ran into Horace Slughorn, who was milling around near a corner and fiddling with a small vial.
"Tom, my dear boy! How nice to see you!" he said, stashing the vial in a pocket and shaking Tom's hand enthusiastically.
"It's good to see you, sir," said Tom, and he meant it.
"I thought you'd be a Deputy Minister by now! Couldn't pass up the chance to influence the younger generations, eh?"
"That's the goal, sir."
"I must say, I was quite concerned when I heard you'd turned down all those job offers. Borgin and Burke's? I do hope they treated you well."
For one satisfying moment he wondered how well Borgin and Burke were getting on with the mess he'd left them. "It was fine, sir."
"Oh, do call me Horace. We're colleagues now, after all," Slughorn told him with a smile.
But because he knew the man so well, Tom could tell that Slughorn was a bit disappointed. No doubt he had hoped that his best student would rise quickly up the ranks of some prestigious, financially impressive place or other that he could brag about.
They walked into the staff room together. Tom had never been in here before; it was one of the few corners of Hogwarts he hadn't managed to penetrate before he graduated, not that there had ever been any need for it. Despite being on the first floor of a medieval castle, it slightly resembled the inside of a Muggle office, with mismatched furniture, a faux-wood table that was at least twenty years old, and a modern-ish kitchenette.
The other professors were huddled in groups, he noticed, occupying different parts of the room.
There was the old guard (decrepit, crotchety men long past retirement age but too stuck in their routine to do anything about it, and angry at everyone else for their poor life choices); the failed researchers (split between former adventurers who looked like they'd just gotten back from wrangling Antipodean Opaleyes in Australia, and bookish scholars who probably thought their stint at Hogwarts would be temporary until their big scientific breakthrough); the young ones (full of hopes and dreams for the country's youth, painfully naïve and idealistic); and one dead guy.
The ghost of Cuthbert Binns sat - or, rather, hovered - in the middle of the sofa in front of the fire, making the two old men on either side of him extremely uncomfortable and not caring one damn bit about it. Tom had never disliked Binns. History of Magic was so useless, and Binns so unobservant, that he had gotten a lot of personal work done during the two hours he'd spend in that class each week.
In the kitchen sat the youngest of the teachers, Minerva McGonagall, who had graduated a few years before him. He only recognized McGonagall because she had made it her goal in life to rat out as many Slytherins as she could during her seventh year as a Gryffindor Head Girl, himself included. She was seated with two other young female teachers, and he decided to join them.
The women introduced themselves as Ilania and Peggy, Astronomy and Arithmancy, respectively. Tom did not bother to commit the names to memory.
"And that's Minerva," said Astronomy, gesturing toward McGonagall and frowning slightly. "She teaches Transfiguration under Dumbledore. Minerva, this is Tom."
Minerva had been staring at Tom as if surprised to see him while trying not to seem surprised at the same time. Her eyes narrowed. "I am familiar," she stated.
Sometimes, when the universe aligned in the right way, or chance or fate had willed it, or he just felt like being an arsehole, Tom gave himself a challenge. And at that moment he decided to challenge himself to get Minerva McGonagall to like him. Not because he cared, of course, but because he knew how ridiculously annoyed with herself she would be if she was ever taken in by the charms of a Slytherin. And anyway, it would be helpful to have an ally that was also Dumbledore-adjacent.
"Nice to see you again, Minerva," he said quietly and with a carefully placed smirk. Could have been sarcasm. Could have been flirting. She would have to figure it out.
"Riddle," she muttered, emotionless.
He gazed around the room and was surprised how many faces there were that he didn't know. "Who is that?" he asked Astronomy, pointing to a vaguely familiar rotund man near the fire.
"Oh," she said, blushing, "that's Beery. Herbology."
That was why Tom didn't recognize him. He had gotten special dispensation to skip out on the intellectual black hole that was Herbology after his second year, thanks in no short order to Dippet, and had barely ever spoken to Beery.
"And that's Grayson and Tyre with Binns," Astronomy continued. "Grayson teaches Ancient Runes, even though he hates it. Tyre is Charms. He's had those horns for a while now. And, let's see..." She pointed to a harsh-looking woman and a tall man near the window who were talking animatedly. "That's Carson, Sports, and Fogg, Muggle Studies."
She stopped when Dippet came in and called for attention.
"Welcome to another year at Hogwarts," he said in a weak voice, looking particularly decrepit. "I trust everyone had a productive summer. A few start-of-term notices, if I may." He pulled out a small piece of parchment and squinted at it.
"Firstly, Professor Kettleburn will not be joining us this term, I'm afraid."
"Suspension again?" asked Tyre.
Dippet gave a knowing look. "I'm not at liberty to say."
"What'd he do this time, the smarmy bastard? Blow something up?"
Dippet ignored this and continued. "Now, as we all know, Professor Merrythought officially retired at the end of last term-"
"Finally," said Beery. "She'd only been threatening it for seven years." Some of the other teachers chuckled.
"Anyway," Dippet sighed, "the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts will be taken by Mister Riddle."
He gestured toward Tom, who was not expecting to be singled out, though he realized he should have anticipated it. He stood and gave a small smile.
There was silence.
"How old are you?" Grayson barked loudly, causing several other people to groan.
The woman named Carson clicked her tongue. "What the hell does that matter, Grayson?"
Despite her comment, most of the room was staring at Tom, expecting him to answer and satiate their curiosity.
The two women beside him seemed especially curious.
"Twenty-three, sir," he said, looking directly at Grayson with determined confidence.
Slight muttering in the crowd.
"Lord, Dippet," Grayson exclaimed, "they get younger every year."
Minerva frowned and looked down at her hands, and Tom wondered if she'd had to endure the same abuse at her first staff meeting.
Slughorn rose from his armchair in the corner. "Now Grayson, I happen to know Mister Riddle quite well, and he is one of the best graduates this school has ever produced."
Tom felt a surge of appreciation for Slughorn.
Grayson scoffed. "Produced when? Last year?"
"He said he was twenty-three, old man. Twenty-three is not eighteen. You should-"
"I think you will find," came the last voice Tom expected to hear, "that Mister Riddle is more than up to the task." Dumbledore nodded politely at him. "I am absolutely sure that Tom will not disappoint us. Isn't that right, Tom?"
Was that a threat? "Of course, sir," he responded, trying to prevent his already weak polite smile from faltering. He had no need for Dumbledore's endorsement. An old codger like Grayson didn't scare him in the least.
The Deputy Headmaster's suspicious support was far more worrying.
"May I continue?" Dippet inquired sarcastically to Grayson, who waved his hand at them all in old man frustration.
"Ahem. Please note that we are still having trouble removing that horribly defaced portrait of Winston Churchill on the fifth floor. Whatever charm the students used last year was quite effective."
A few people looked at Tyre. "Still working on it, sir," he mumbled.
"Very well. Now-"
"Who the bloody hell is Winston Churchill?" Slughorn demanded.
Fogg took offense to that and made a loud "tsk" sound at Slughorn.
"Now," Dippet continued, "as usual, the Ministry will be conducting inspections in November, so please be prepared to accommodate them."
"I still don't understand the point of that," interjected Slughorn. "I taught for fifteen years without an inspection, and all the sudden-"
"If you remember correctly, Professor," Fogg said angrily, "a student died several years ago. A Muggle-born, of course, as if they don't have enough to worry about, the poor things. We've been on the watch list since then."
Tom shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
The meeting went on for another hour, during which Astronomy stared longingly at Tom, Grayson yelled at everyone who spoke, and Dumbledore just stood there quietly, observing the crowd with mild interest and making Tom increasingly paranoid about whatever nefarious deeds he was probably planning.
The old dining table in the staff room looked like it was painted by someone who had never seen actual wood but had vaguely heard about it through word of mouth. Tom stared at it, in a daze, wondering if he could catch it on fire using only his mind.
"The children will arrive tonight," said Astronomy, who had taken to following him around any time he wasn't in his quarters, and was now sitting beside him, eating her lunch and droning on about the Start of Term Feast, "probably around seven."
He responded with a halfhearted "hm."
"Then the Sorting, then dinner, of course."
For some unfathomable reason he felt nervous about the whole first day thing, and being nervous made him irritable. "Yes," he mumbled, "I'm aware of how the first night tends to go at Hogwarts, Astronomy."
She looked confused. "What did you call me?"
"Ilania, obviously," he muttered, hoping that was right.
At that moment, a strangely familiar voice sounded from the corridor. "Well, it's not illegal in South America, is it? Absolutely ridiculous."
Seconds later Slughorn walked in with - to Tom's surprise - the woman from the shop that had asked for crushed shrunken head. "I'm aware of that, Miss Fowler," Slughorn explained, "but as you know, your tenure comes out of Ilvermorny, and America has banned the use. Not much I can do, I'm afraid."
"Who is that?" Tom asked Ilania.
She gave him a sinister look. "That's Cornelia Fowler, from America. Potions understudy. Been traveling to different schools trying to learn about Potions education, but word has it she's up to... something else."
"'Something else?'"
Ilania nodded grimly. "Something else."
He tried not to lose his patience. "Like what?"
"Oh, I don't know. It's just a thing people say, you know..."
He looked down at the table again.
The rest of the day seemed to fly by because, naturally, when you wanted to push something off, time had a funny way of speeding up.
By seven-thirty the students had arrived and were packing into the Great Hall. Tom sat near the middle of the long teachers' table in the front, stuck between Minerva and Ilania, pretending his nervousness didn't exist by thinking about all the historical relics he might find now that he had access to the castle.
Maybe he'd take the Sorting Hat. It had belonged to Gryffindor, hadn't it? Though, it probably wasn't a good idea to perform Dark rituals on an already sentient object that contained a thousand years of Founders' wisdom and could yell at him the whole time about how stupid he was for attempting such a thing.
Then the crowd was going silent, and then the first years were coming through, and Beery was putting the Sorting Hat on a stool, and everything was happening very fast-
-until the Sorting Hat began to sing.
Some enchanted evening
You may see a stranger
You may see a stranger
Across a crowded room
And somehow you know
You know even then
That somewhere you'll see her
Again and again.
"Oh no, not again," Minerva muttered.
Some enchanted evening
Someone may be laughin'
"What is happening?" Tom asked her.
You may hear her laughin'
Across a crowded room
And night after night
As strange as it seems
"Beery's been listening to his records again," she explained, as if that didn't bring up a host of other questions.
The sound of her laughter
Will sing in your dreams.
Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons
Wise men never try.
Some enchanted evening
When you find your true love
When…
When the song had finally finished, the students were mumbling in confusion, and Dippet was giving Beery an angry look and shaking his head.
Then everything sped up again, and the Sorting was over, and Dippet was starting his speech, and then there was food.
Tom decided to put his focus toward something else to get his mind off the nervousness he was most definitely not feeling at all.
"So, Minerva," he said, all charm, "I read your most recent article in Transfiguration Today. Quite clever."
She furrowed her brow in confusion. "Why?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Why?"
"Why did I read it?"
"No. Why is it 'clever?'"
"I just meant-"
"It's funny, isn't it? How a man can submit a scientific article to a reputable journal and it's a completely normal thing, regardless of the quality of the content, but when a woman does it, it's surprisingly 'clever,' and even then, only if it's able to surpass the highest quality male submissions."
"Er-"
"Indeed," Ilania joined in. "You know, I tried to submit a study on calculating the distance between galaxies and the impact black holes have on the speed with which they travel through space, and I was rejected by Space and Element? Apparently, my research wasn't 'directly relevant to expanding wizardkind's knowledge of the immediate solar system,' even though some decrepit researcher at Oxford got his ridiculous paper about Alpha Centauri into the same bloody edition."
Tom felt very uncomfortable.
"I- I just meant," he muttered to Minerva, "I thought it was clever how you compared organic and inorganic molecular transfiguration methods and found that they require vastly different applications of spell work."
"Oh," she said, blushing slightly.
Slughorn, ever helpful, chose that moment to visit, and Tom stood up to greet him, thankful for the excuse to flee the conversation he'd gotten himself stuck in.
"Professor Riddle!" he said congenially, patting Tom on the shoulder. "Enjoying your first day?"
"Yes, sir- er, Horace."
"Ha! Good to know you're getting acclimated. By the way," he glanced over at Dumbledore and Dippet, then leaned in close and whispered, "I'm thinking about resurrecting the Slug Club again, only for my best students, you know, and I would love for you to join us. As an alumnus?"
"Oh. I'd be delighted."
"Excellent! Keep it between us, though. Dumbledore doesn't like when I single students out."
Tom was suddenly very motivated to help Horace resurrect the Slug Club. "Understood," he said.
a/n: I hate author notes, but I want to say thank you to those of you who left a review. Glad you like it so far!