Chapter Fifteen:
The End of Another Year

I realized, as I walked with a satisfied smile curling at my lips, that I need not have worried at all about our OWLS. They had been so effortless and so simple that I nearly laughed aloud at myself and the stooped wizards that examined us. The feeble witch that had prodded at my Transfiguration skills squinted so, and it was challenging to convince myself that her sight reached past the tip of her nose. Tom's examiner–he informed me later–fared no better or worse. Tom had voiced his scorn at such improper judgement, fuming as we strolled side-by-side dangerously near to the edge of the lake. The farce tide teased my bare feet; I was eager to let my toes sink gleefully into the mud.

"Why, Tom!" I exclaimed, feigning surprise. "From the way that you are going on, I would say that you were actually planning on doing something productive with your life!"

He smirked. "Very droll, Danielle. You must agree, though... it is not a fair examination if the ones examining are incapable of doing so."

I shrugged. "It is simpler for us, then." I lifted the edge of my palm to my forehead in order to shade my eyes from the glaring effect the sun had upon the water's rippling surface. Tom squinted in disapproval to the light as he had protested when I bade us spend time outdoors. I had begun to suspect that Tom was nocturnal.

The grounds were still with the dead weight of hot air pressing around us. Nothing dared to cloud the azure sky on the wondrous summer afternoon that it was. I could taste the freedom balancing on the end of my tongue. I had not a care for what was to become of me when my fifth year came to a close, for my thoughts were only for the present.

"You have changed, my dear Danielle," he murmured in a half-teasing, half-serious tone.

"Whatever do you mean?" I asked worriedly. "Is... is change not good?"

He chuckled, sending my heart in to a flurried panic. I nearly yelped and doubled over, catching myself at just the right moment. For my feelings had grown ever-stronger and omnipresent. Tom was everything to me. Although I was but fifteen, a fickle age for most girls such as I, I understood what it meant to be in love. Yes, I loved him with every fiber of my being. I had thought that the mere attraction that I had felt for him at fourteen was what was described as that strange, new idea. It was nothing in comparison to the emotion that burned deeply in the confines of my chest. I wondered, if a simple laugh from him could cause me so much glorious anguish, what would happen if... if...

I could not bring myself to even think of it. It was unrequited, what I felt.

I blushed furiously when I realized that Tom was staring at me strangely. "Danielle?"

I ducked my head in embarrassment. "I am sorry, Tom... what were we discussing?"

He grinned; I demanded my heart to be still. "The ways in which you have changed since we first met... Did you know that it has been over a year now? It amazes me..." He gazed at me with a near-wistful expression.

Indeed. It had been over a year.

Fancy that.

-

Fate found us in the library, not for our study habits–there was no need to do so any longer–but as a common place to meet. Oft times, I caught myself wishing that I had been sorted into Slytherin, and not the accursed Ravenclaw. There was little for us to do in a room stacked high with books upon books save for having intimate conversations in the midst of them.

I seldom read any longer. It was a hobby I had given up before it had really become one. Before, it had been an obsession to hide from the faults of myself and the rest of the superficial world. But there was no longer any need to hide. Not with Tom.

Tom was a solver of all problems alike. He had persuaded Professor Dippet to allow us to arrive at Hogwarts one month before the new term commenced. The remainder of the holiday we would be required to spend in an orphanage. The orphanage, as Tom referred to it. He had resided there for nearly his entire life, and yet I hardly knew anything of it. He became irritable when the subject was touched upon, or stubbornly quiet. From what he did describe of it, I did not hold much hope.

It is degrading, he told me once, because it is for muggles. They know nothing of magic there..."

-

The orphanage was more of an overrun boardinghouse than anything else. A tangled mass of weeds crept alongside the building and curled like demented green fingers though the decrepit windows and doorways. It was no small wonder that Tom had despised such a horrid location as that. He smiled at me grimly as we attempted to wade our way through a thicket of overgrown lawn. "Lovely place, do you not think?" he commented cooly. The waver in his tone revealed the uncertainty he held for revisiting something that clearly contained so many memories.

I grimaced sympathetically. "Let us hope that our stay here will not be prolonged." He nodded in agreement and rapped softly upon the rotting wooden door with his knuckles. A squat woman in her late forties thrust it open impatiently ere he could raise his hand for a second tap.

"Tom," she said curtly with the air of one that thinks upon themself as important, "Back again, are you? I see you've brought us a stray." She scrutinized me through her small, unkind eyes.

"My name is Danie-" I began, but was abruptly cut short.

"Do not speak unless spoken to! Where did you find the girl, Tom, an alleyway? We'll have to imprint some manners into this one." She clicked her tongue disapprovingly.

I stared at the shrewd female in shock. An alleyway? I fumbled at a thin strand of my hair self-consciously. Tom glanced at my with pity. Make her vanish! I silently beseeched him. She 'tutted' to herself as she led us to where we would dwell until late July.

Tom's room–he had acquired a permanent residence there–was shabby and sparsely furnished. A spare cot had been haphazardly set up in the corner opposite his usual bed, the blankets of which were still in shambles–most likely left askew from when he had fled the previous summer. A skeletal brass lamp stood despondently to one side. A cracked, dusty-encrusted mirror was the only true decoration that hung upon the greying walls. Tom shrugged and mouthed, "It is not much."

The woman glared between the pair of us. "Now, I'll have nothing indecent from the two of you, or it's back to the streets with you both!" With that, she turned on her heels and left. Tom blushed and avoided my gaze.

"She is as pleasant as always," he muttered, still determined not to look at me.

I grasped for a new topic. "So, er... what exactly do we do here?"

He grimaced. "The 'Madam' will have us doing chores till it is noon, at the least. You will assist with the cooking. And I"–he sighed dramatically–"will be needed elsewhere than the kitchen.

I giggled. Already, the familiar environment had unearthed a side of him that I was not familiar with. Just when I thought I had begun to know him, I discovered that I had deeper yet to dig.