Harry barely managed to not look like a complete idiot as he stepped from the fireplace in the Leaky Cauldron having decided it would be the best form of magical travel to get Tom accustomed to, as broomsticks were far too slow and apparating tended to cause first time users to feel nauseas and often ended up with vomit staining someone's shoes. It didn't help that the knight bus wasn't invented yet as well as being worse than a muggle amusement park ride. Harry had tagged Tom with a tracking charm, though had felt mildly embarrassed when he hadn't required it, he was also slightly embarrassed that Tom had take to flooing like a fish to water, while Harry still had some trouble with it even after living in the wizarding world for almost two decades.

"Are you alright?" Tom asked. Harry just nodded his head and guided Tom to the entrance to Diagon Alley. Before he had a chance to comment on the rather lackluster aesthetics of the entrance to the Alley, Harry quickly tapped the correct combination with his wand and stood back and looked at Tom for his reaction. "Amazing." He breathed.

""Welcome to Diagon Alley, Thomas." Harry said. "Now, I know it looks amazing and wondrous, but don't wander too far from me, understood?"

"Yes, Harry." Tom said with a nod glancing back at his guardian. "I won't wander off."

Harry nodded accepting Tom's assurances and looked around trying to figure out which store he should go to first. "Ollivander's is pointless right now he's too young, Flourish and Blotts will take too long best save it for last. I'll wait to get him a trunk, so to the apothecary I guess. Come Thomas." With his mind made up Harry placed his hand on Tom's shoulder and guided him towards a rather foul smelling store.

"This place is disgusting." Tom griped.

"Yes, it rather is. Unfortunately we can't get our ingredients anywhere else yet." Harry commiserated.

"Yet?"

"Well, I'm having Inky set up greenhouses back at the Manor. I'll also be taking a trip to the Ministry in order to get breeding licenses so that we can eventually start harvesting our own ingredients from fauna as well as flora." Harry explained. "For now, though, we have to them."

After that short dialogue Harry approached the clerk standing at the counter and began to haggle with him due to the amount of potions ingredients Harry was planning on buying. Tom grew quickly bored of this and began to explore the store. While the store was kind of interesting in the sheer amount of weird things it had for sale, due to the fact that Tom didn't know what they were or what they were for he found the entire experience mostly boring.

This however made Tom realize something. Not everything in the magical world was going to be exciting, which somewhat dampened his excitement at being in Diagon Alley, but Tom decided that it didn't matter as he was just going to focus on doing the exciting stuff and leave the boring stuff to Harry.

Shortly thereafter Harry finished up his business and pulled Tom out with him summoning Clinky to come take his purchases back to the Mortuarius. With that done Harry decided to head to the bookstore and get back home as he didn't want to overwhelm Tom too much, what Harry was planning was a subtle thing and needed to be executed perfectly or it would all be for naught and ll the tragedies he had been planning on stopping would happen regardless of Harry's wishes.

"Alright Thomas, we're going to the bookstore and then heading home."

"Can't I get a wand today?" Tom asked as his eyes gravitated towards the wand in Harry's hand. He had been planning on getting one today so that Harry could teach him even more magic than what he had seen.

"Unfortunately for you, no. It is against the law to sell a wand to someone under the age of eleven so you'll have to wait three more years for your own wand." Harry explained as he led his young charge towards Flourish and Blotts. "Now I'll be picking up the books that we'll be using to teach you the basics in potions and the like, but while we're there you should look for any books that catch your interest and we'll get them if they aren't too advanced. How does that sound?"

Tom knew Harry was just getting him books as a sort of consolation prize, but he still wanted the books so that he could learn more and so nodded his head in acquiescence.

The duo made their way into the bookstore and Tom was shocked when he saw how much larger it was on the inside compared to how big it should have been given the dimension of the outside of the building. Harry noticed Tom's amazement and just told him that this is what magic could do when utilized properly. After that little interaction Harry set Tom free to peruse the aisles at his leisure. Tom took the opportunity given and went up and down each aisle carefully noting everything that caught his attention.

A few of the thick texts that drew his eye were beginner texts on something called arithmancy another on runes, and a third on Occlumency. What drew his attention the most though was a book on divination. What no one knew about Tom was that he was obsessed with fate and prophecies. It was the only way he could justify his being abandoned at the orphanage by both his mother and father. While he did know his mother died he couldn't help but feel that she just gave up and didn't fight to stay with him, and he had no idea who his father was.

Picking up the book Tom began to flip through the pages and everything he read interested him more than the last. Eventually Tom got lost in the book and only snapped out of his reverie when a girl's voice sounded from behind him.

"Everything in that book is fake you know."

Tom turned to look at the person who had interrupted his concentration and studied the girl behind him. She was slightly shorter than he was leading him to believe that she was either the same age or a little younger the him. She had black hair done up in a ponytail and was wearing glasses.

"How do you know it's fake?" Tom asked curiously.

"Because everyone knows that all seers are frauds. There is no such thing as predicting the future."

"Why not?" Tom wondered. It didn't make much sense that magic could do many fantastical things but predicting the future wasn't one of them and told the girl as much.

"It doesn't matter if you think it doesn't make sense. It isn't real." The girl said adamantly. Tom looked at the girl with narrowed eyes, she was annoying him by deriding something he liked and he decided to do something about it.

As he was preparing to influence this girl's mind in order to get her to fear him he felt a hand suddenly come down firmly on his shoulder, breaking his thought process and disrupting his mental attack, preventing from actually doing anything.

"Now, Thomas, what is going on here?" Harry asked as he stepped forward and inserted himself into the children's argument. He had been prepared to let it play out however it did but the instant Tom made what Harry called a 'Voldemort' decision he had to intervene to prevent anything untoward from happening.

"Mr. Peverell this girl is casting aspersions against something that I find interesting and I didn't like it." Tom explained. He decided to call Harry by a more formal title in order to not give this girl the wrong idea.

"This boy is looking at a fake book! It's bad and you should make it so he shouldn't read it." The girl said definitively, crossing her arms.

"And what book is that?" Harry asked, however before either of the children had a chance to answer a rather stately woman came walking towards the trio of people. Harry turned towards the woman, correctly assuming that this was the girl's mother.

"Minerva what are you doing over here? I told you not to leave my side." The woman questioned. However she noticed the other two people there and turned towards them, putting off the answers she would receive from her daughter. "Oh, excuse me and my daughter my name is Margaret McGonagall and this is my daughter Minerva."

Harry smiled graciously and grabbed her proffered hand laying a small kiss on her knuckles. "No excuse necessary, Madame. My name is Harrison Peverell and this is my ward Thomas Riddle." Harry introduced. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Margaret just smiled pleasantly before turning back towards her daughter a small frown making its way onto her face. "Now, Minerva, what were you doing? I told you to stay close to me." The little girl folded her arms and pouted, irritated at her mother just assuming she had done something wrong.

"I didn't do anything Mother, I was just telling this boy the the book he was reading was wrong." Minerva said vehemently. Tom scoffed and shook his head.

"No she wasn't! She was trying to get me to stop reading and telling me what to do!" Tom insisted. Harry and Margaret cast glances at each and looked back at their children. It was Harry who finally interceded in the glaring match between Tom and Minerva.

"How about we say you were both wrong and then we can make amends over dinner?" Harry suggested looking towards Margaret for permission.

Margaret thought about it for a second before finally deciding that dinner was a good idea and that it might help Minerva to make a friend her age. She looked back toward Harry and gave him a resolute nod. "That sounds delightful, We will take of course accept your invitation." She said.

"Mother!" Minerva said seeming aghast that her parent would accept the request and hoping that it was all a joke.

"Splendid," Harry said. "Here's my floo address, how does five sound?" He said as he handed her a piece of parchment with his manor's name on it.

"It sounds great, Minerva and I will be there." The woman said before she gathered her daughter and left the store to prepare for the upcoming meal.

Harry and Tom proceeded to purchase their books, the one on divination included, before they made their way to the Leaky Cauldron and went home again. Once they reached their home Harry bid the elves to put away their recent purchases and guided Tom to his study. He sat the young boy down in a chair on one side of his desk before reclining in the other. The two stared at each other in a tense silence before Harry finally broke it.

"What did you think you were doing?" Harry asked quietly an undercurrent of rage to his voice. Tom seemed to understand this as he was quiet for a moment.

"I don't know." He said glumly.

"You don't know?" Harry questioned incredulously. "You don't know?!" Harry stood and slammed his hands on the desk in front of him. "What you almost did was extremely illegal not to mention highly immoral! You can't just go around influencing people however you like Thomas!"

"Why not?" Tom demanded as he too stood, his anger igniting as he was subjected to an unnecessary lecture in his eyes. "Why can't I? If that girl couldn't protect herself from it than it is her fault if it works." Tom said.

"Her fault? HER FAULT! Thomas what you nearly did is one of the worst things you could do to someone! You nearly annihilated her sense of self!" Harry said.

"What? How?"

"The power you were building up in your irritation was much more than what you built up trying to influence me and I would have had a little trouble blocking it. For someone who isn't a master Occlumens, it would have obliterated their conscious mind. Thomas, you nearly killed that girl." Harry said quietly.

Tom's face paled and he began to shake his head in denial. While he wasn't sure about the conscious stuff Harry was talking about, finding out he had nearly killed someone today was an incredible shock. He looked at Harry, silently begging him to take back what he said, pleading with him to relieve Tom of his horror. What he found instead was calm insistence, and Tom knew for a fact that Harry wasn't joking. Refusing to face his guilt and Harry's recriminations any longer, Tom turned tail and fled the room, not knowing, nor caring, where he was headed.

"Keep an eye on him, please, Pinky." Harry said as he sat back down in his chair. After hearing a small chime in acknowledgement Harry reached into his inner pocket with a sigh and removed his cigarettes, lighting before beginning to smoke it leisurely. He glanced at the cigarette with a smirk. Hermione would be so irritated to find out he had picked up smoking after her death. While she had toned down considerable on her more preachy behaviours as she grew older, one thing that she did get more vehement about was exercise and being healthy. Granted, they were in the middle of a war at the time so it at least made sense for her to be so ornery about someone not taking care of themselves but the point still stood.

Shaking his memories from his head Harry turned his focus back to the matter at hand. On one side he was questioning himself on whether his self appointed task of rehabilitating Voldemort due to the actions he had taken this afternoon, another side of him was pointing at some definitive evidence that he was on the right track.

Tom had been seriously shaken up when Harry had told him that he had almost killed Minerva, and how surreal was that? Harry had in the same moment both endangered and saved the life of his future teacher, all on accident. Still, it seemed that this just might work, but Harry was going to have to be stricter in Tom's tutelage if this is what he was going to use those lessons for. Though, admittedly, it was fairly naive of Harry to assume that Tom was too young to do anything too much like Voldemort, especially after Tom had tried to influence him at the orphanage.

Enough of that though, Harry was set on his path and taking the events of this afternoon into account, he still had his work cut out for him. Nothing to do but to do it. Deciding to get started on a lesson plan for the young boy, Harry addressed his empty study.

"Clyde could you prepare a dinner for five please? And Pinky please look after Young Thomas and make sure he doesn't hurt himself, however I think he needs his space right now." Without waiting for an answer Harry pulled out some parchment and a quill before waving his hand at the door, it closed with nary a sound.

A/N: Alright and that is chapter three. Sorry for the long wait and the shorter chapter, but I'm writing this as I go along, without an outline so bare with me. To that end, if you have any ideas or you spot a plot hole, please, leave it in a review. See ya next time.