Chapter 4: The Legend Begins
After some funny reaction of the Hat admiring Tom's ambition, it sorted him into Slytherin, thus condemning an unsuspecting muggle-born, for that is what Tom Riddle essentially was, to seven-year imprisonment in the bastion of blood-purists and conservatives; or so it seemed.
It is with this phrase that Elphias Doge and Bathilda Bagshot describe the first steps of Tom Riddle in Hogwarts, in their jointly written biography masterpiece (an impressive slab comparable to Churchill's work about the World War 2) of the one who is considered the founder of modern magic.
When Professor Dumbledore had arrived to take him to the hidden magical part of London, so that he could get all his school supplies, Tom had greeted the Professor with the handshake. The moment they had made contact Tom's mind had received surge of various snippets of Dumbledore's painful past and of Dumbledore's efforts to put an end to Grindelwald's crimes. That had been the first time something like that had happened to Tom, and he had taken it as the sign of going in the right direction, that working with/for Dumbledore would allow him to show how powerful he can be. (Read the previous paragraph while listening to Split/Unbreakable Visions theme.)
As Tom was approaching the Slytherin table, his heart was full of joy: he was home. He could see a bunch of children and greenhorns trying to put on their most menacing faces, just like the kids from the orphanage. There were a few "mudblood" that came his way, too. One thing was clear to Tom: he had lot to learn and had to learn it fast. Hogwarts was just the tip of the iceberg, he had entered a hidden community which had been doing so for centuries. They had their rules and had developed their own technologies how to use the gift of magic, and they didn't like newcomers. Tom had to quickly and efficiently infiltrate the social network of Slytherin in order to gather the needed knowledge and information, create his own relational network, and create a good public persona behind which he could easily hide his hero alter-ego. And so, he decided to be a bookworm and a scholar.
At that particular moment, young Tom Riddle had no inkling that this particular choice would turn him into an object of worship of this hidden community and to lesser extent in the mundane world. At that moment, Tom Riddle had absolutely no clue what so ever that on May 2, 1998 he would be the guest of honour of the new Ministry grand-opening (the date was chosen so to commemorate the 60 years since he had entered the magical community), and that fruits of his collaboration with Dumbledore and Flamel as "bookworm" Tom Riddle would earn him a monumental 10-meter-high statue in the grandiose hall of the said Ministry (which had replaced the Fountain of Magical Brethren) and overshadow in public eye his achievements as hero.
…...
"Merlin's balls" mumbled Albus Dumbledore into his beard. And again those words were associated with something Tom Riddle had done. In fact, those words were pronounced so many times since he had met the young man, that Dumbledore was starting to suspect that Tom Riddle is indeed a product of the said balls.
It had started that day when Tom had picked his wand for the first time at the Olivander's (a piece of yew with the first feather Fawkes had given him). The magical cord that is usually heard when a wand is bonding with the owner, had not come only from the wand, but also from Tom himself. And it had been so monumental and majestic it had reminded Albus of Also Sprach Zarathustra.
This time Albus' reaction was provoked by how Tom Riddle was casting his spells. At first he would do just the regular movement until he mastered it. Then to this regular movement a "dancing" (as other students would call it mockingly) was added. What beginning students ignored is the fact that this "dancing" had been a technique invented by Chinese wizards to improve the quality of their spells. However, this dancing had never become a widely used technique as it required a very developed sense of the magical flows through the body of the caster and how they interacted with the flow of magic through the wand. This sense was something wizards and witches managed to acquire only late in their life (if ever). And here was Tom Riddle, a first-year, using very efficiently this difficult technique.
It was as if Tom Riddle could see magic (and here Albus laughed at himself for advancing such an absurd hypothesis).