Chapter 7
It was a beautiful evening in early April, and I was on my way down to the school greenhouses to pick some Potions ingredients. However, the sight of the sun setting over the nearby mountains and staining the sky mauve, tangerine, and magenta, robbed of the scant little breath that typically filled my lungs. Watching the rays of the dying sun enact a final sparkling drama on the lake would be spectacular, I thought, so I took a detour around the lake's edge. Yes, it took longer to get to the greenhouses by going around the lake, but sometimes beauty was more important than efficiency.
I had been walking around the lake's edge for a few minutes when I spotted the shadow of a tall, dark male figure silhouetted over the water.
"Tom!" I called, as I came near enough to recognize the boy.
"Good evening, Professor," replied Tom, tossing a stone at the lake. As I came to stand beside him, I watched the stone skip across the water. When it stopped, I expected it to sink into the lake, but it stayed afloat. It was then that I noticed that a cluster of stones was suspended on top of the lake, and that Tom must have been working wandless magic.
"Why are you doing that?" I asked, gesturing at the stones floating on the water.
"To hone my concentration, sir, and just to see if I can." Tom shrugged languidly. Then, he turned his eyes from the stones, obviously ending the spell, and the stones sank into the lake. "Now I see that I can not only keep the stones afloat if I want to, but I can also make them sink upon my command."
"Surely you knew that you could perform such a simple spell already." I chuckled. "There's not a spell that's been devised that you can't do, my boy."
"Yes, Professor, before I performed such a basic bit of magic, I knew that I could do it, but now that I've done it, I have proof of that." Tom's eyes gleamed at me, and, in the peculiar light created by the sunset, his dark eyes seemed to contain glints of red. Trying not to think about how I had glimpsed more flickers of crimson in Tom's eyes ever since we had our nightmarish chat about Horcruxes last year which I would never be able to forget even if I wanted to, I told myself that the odd light was making me imagine things.
"You're such a skeptic," I remarked, clapping him lightly on the shoulder.
"It's an unfortunate side-effect of being raised in the place I was brought up." A veil fell across Tom's face as he established as much. "The matron, Ms. Cole, was always telling us to pray, and God would magically fix our problems. That sounds really nice and all, but God never answered the prayers of any of the children I lived with, so I figured out early on that it was smarter to solve my own problems however I could, and not rely on God to rescue me. I learned that God, who probably doesn't even exist, doesn't care about saving poor people. I realized that if you want to survive you have magically fix your problems. I recognized that if you want to live, you've got to keep yourself afloat, because if you depend on someone else, they'll always end up letting you sink. Once you sink, there won't be a heaven for you to go to, because heaven is just another stupid lie weak people create to console themselves since they can't accept the horrors of this world and they can't bear to understand that this is the only life any of us will ever know. Once you sink, there will be nothing but an abyss for you to drown in. If you don't want to drown, you have to find a way to stay afloat. It's that simple—and that complicated."
"Tom," I chided. "Such thoughts are very offensive to some people, you know. Take care who you share them with."
"Of course such thoughts are offensive to some people." Tom offered another languid shrug. "Most people want to believe in God, as I said, because they can't bear the idea that there is no higher power protecting them and that when they die that is the end of everything instead of being the start of something wonderful. The people who would be offended are the sort of ignorant beings I wouldn't share my opinions with. I only share my thoughts with clever people like yourself, Professor."
"I'm honored that you think me worthy to confide in." I smiled wryly, thinking it was like Tom to mingle an insult with a compliment. "Still, you might consider the fact that Professor Dippet is a devout Christian, and he is definitely not ignorant, and he would be most distressed to hear one of his favorite students talk as you just did."
"I'll be sure not to mention my theory to him, then," answered Tom, utterly unabashed. "Headboys aren't supposed to make the headmaster hate them, after all."
"Oh, Professor Dippet could never hate you, Tom," I assured him, squeezing his shoulder. "He would just see it as his moral obligation to save the soul of such a decent young man. Yes, I think if he heard you speak your mind about God, he would take it upon himself to convert you."
"I hope he wouldn't." Tom's eyes flashed. "If he did, I might have to say God spare me from anyone who would convert me, but I couldn't say that, since I don't believe in God."
"It must be very lonely not to believe in God." I shook my head. I was hardly religious in any sense of the word, but I couldn't imagine how it would feel to have rejected the idea of God entirely.
"It's not lonely to go through life without an invisible means of support." Now, it was Tom's turn to shake his head. "It's not even lonely to realize that everybody else is deluding themselves, and you alone know the truth. It's empowering. You recognize that you alone control what happens to you, and that if you have sunk, it is your fault, and, if you have floated, it was because of your own strength."
"Some people would attribute such strength to God," I reminded him gently.
"Such people just couldn't bear their own strength," snorted Tom. "Such people would be every bit as deluded as those who sank." Before I could respond, he bent over and scooped up a shell. Running a hand along its ridges, he muttered, "This was abandoned by a freshwater hermit crab. Hermit crabs don't have homes of their own, you know. They just keep outgrowing them. It reminds me of how my mother died giving birth to me, so I was stuck in the orphanage until Dumbledore explained to me that I was a wizard and could attend Hogwarts. Did you ever stop to think that every student at Hogwarts was a child whose parents decided that they didn't need to have their baby around? Did you ever stop to think how maybe what drives all of us is our first abandonment? Did you ever stop to think about how much we have to prove because of that abandonment?"
Before I could stutter out a reply to any of these peculiar and difficult questions that I didn't truly want to answer, Tom continued, "I suppose even when I was little I was like the hermit crab. I was too big for the orphanage, so I was brought here. For years now, it seems like I've been too big for the school. It makes me wonder if I'll be too big for the world, too."
"That's why I told you it's a waste of your talents to be a clerk in a store," I said, shaking my head over Tom's misguided career decision.
"It's a temporary position." As he always did when I took him to task for his silly career decision, Tom dismissed my concern.
"You should go into the Ministry," I went on, warming to my theme. "You'd make head of department in no time. Then, you'd be Junior Undersecretary or Senior Undersecretary to the Minister, and, after that, I don't doubt that you'd become the Minister. Oh, yes, my boy, the Ministry would offer the kind of advancement that you seek."
"And once I am Minister, what would I do, Professor?" demanded Tom.
"I don't know," I admitted after a moment's pause. More jovially, I quipped, "I'm sure someone as clever as you could come up with something, though."
"You and I both don't know what I would do with myself once I had reached the exalted rank of Minister of Magic, sir." Tom's voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper. "What's the sense of becoming Minister when I don't have a clue where I would go after that? What's the point of joining the Ministry when I'll outgrow it as soon as I become Minister?"
"I thought you liked doing things just because you enjoyed having proof that you could achieve them," I pointed out, remembering his explanation for keeping the stones afloat.
"I do, but I also need a challenge." There was a trace of hysteria in Tom's manner now. "Sometimes it hurts to not fit into a shell anymore."
"You're brilliant, Tom." I shook my head, not knowing how to respond to his anguish. "That's a blessing, not a curse."
"Yes." Tom was starting to regain his composure now. "Yes. It's better to be brilliant than to be a fool, although the only reason anyone is regarded as brilliant is because there are an awful lot of fools."
"Go up to the castle, thinker of deep thoughts," I ordered, deciding to end this awkward conversation now before I drowned in waters that were way over my head. "Students aren't supposed to be on the grounds after dark. You should know that if you are so brilliant."
"I'm clever enough to wait and see if you remember the rules." Tom smirked at me for a second, and then he turned to head back up to the school. "Good night, Professor. I'll see you in Potions tomorrow."
Watching him return to the school, I couldn't help but think how painful it must be to believe, as he did, that you were truly alone in the world. That sense of cosmic loneliness must have been what made it so easy for Tom to regard the universe as an infinitely cold and dark place. It must have made it simple for him to believe that in order to keep himself afloat, it was acceptable to commit acts of unfathomable evil. It must have made it easy for him to hate and to feel that when the world slapped him across the face it was preferable to strike back than to turn the other cheek. In the lonely world he created for himself, it must have been such a comfort for Tom to think that even though he was alone like everyone else, he was also great…