Flashes of light
Albus Dumbledore, newest teacher of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, head boy and top of his class the year he graduated, and well known music lover, was running out of energy.
Amos Walker seemed to have an endless supply of questions. It wasn't in the young, over exuberant way that most children had, either. Albus was used to that from his first year classes. Talking to Amos was more similar to the way that Auror's had interviewed him after his brother was arrested for experimenting on Goats.
The cycle began with a deep question. Then careful listening. Then pertaining questions. Listening. Reason why something he'd said was wrong or lacking. Listening with a critical question. Then starting a new topic.
Albus was just waiting for a notebook to appear. Maybe for the boy to tell him, politely, that Albus needed to look into that in more depth and come back to teach him when he understood it better. Or tell him that it all seemed okay but that Amos would need to reserve judgement until he investigated further. Maybe even say "Well, it all looks good. But you might want to spend more time with your brother to prevent this type of thing from happening again."
This boy was built for Law Enforcement.
"- and so the village of DiaGono was absorbed into London, quite on accident, as the city grew. Charms and enchantments, already on it, prevented the new city from noticing as they built their homes against preexisting ones. As London became so important and muggleborns so welcomed into the community, a pun based nickname became more and more prevalent. And eventually the area was renamed Diagon Alley rather than DiaGono Village. It had nothing to do with the shape at all."
"Good," Amos said. "Because this street is straight. With lots of small straight streets coming off of it. And they run parallel to the streets outside. And I do not appreciate people who cannot see the clear differences between two oposite lines."
Amos paused as he looked over the cauldron ingredients in the display. "What is this?"
Albus was getting this boy into school no matter what. Albus wasn't going to look back on this headache of a day as a waste of time. And he had to get the boy into the school if he wanted to get revenge on all of the other teachers for sticking him with this duty.
The Tour was nice. Anakin saw a lot of interesting things and learned a lot more. And the trip ended in ice cream, and that was a rare treat.
But he did notice a lot of things that he thought even normal boys would recognize, that the Professor seemed to not see.
Like the way that woman in the pub had firmly steered her children away from them when Dumbledore had spoken to the innkeeper, despite the kid's clear intention to put in another order. Another woman in the street had called her children to her from where they were looking at broomsticks, once she saw him. Another had simply moved between he and her children and quietly eyed him. While looking around, he saw several adults talking behind their hands while looking at him.
The way the store owners had always moved to be near whenever he and the professor were, when they entered a store. They didn't offer any help or try to make them buy things. They just watched him. Especially when Dumbledore was distracted. The store owner in the book shop had simply followed them around the store, supposedly to dust, but clearly keeping an eye on him as well.
He saw the way children his own age made faces as they saw his clothing.
He saw the men in the community do the same thing.
He'd visited a village once, in the early days of the clone wars. The Jedi were considered unnecessary outsiders and intruders. The faces and reactions had been similar.
One woman had tried to get close to Obi Wan. The force had been the only reason Obi Wan had caught her knife before it dug into his ribs. The village head had guards drag her away as he promised it wouldn't happen again. But they had seen her, mere hours later, walking free down the village street.
This was not a safe place.
But the Ice Cream was very good.
As he approached the corner table with their treats, Albus was considering the way to broach the topic of school. He put the chocolate cream in front of Amos and the biscuits next to him, closer to Tom, who they were meant for. He sat and took a bite of his own vanilla ice cream, before launching into the new topic.
"What do you think of Diagon Alley?"
"It's full of interesting things," Amos said. He dipped one of the biscuits into his ice cream and passed it to Tom. Tom immediately tried to fit the whole thing into his mouth. Amos pulled it out so he could swallow. It turned into an odd sort of dance, coordinated and graceful and feeding both boys, somehow. "The people aren't very nice."
"What do you mean?" Albus said, blinking. He couldn't remember anyone saying anything to Amos. There had been no slurs or taunts. They hadn't been kicked out of anywhere. It was a marked improvement from fifty years before and some of the stories his mother had told him. Certainly improved from the time he was a child.
"They look at me like I'm a disease," Amos said casually, "Or a criminal. Do they know something I don't?"
Albus met the boy's sharp eyes.
"Ah," Albus doesn't know how to respond. "Your cloths mark you as Muggleborn. And some still carry old prejudices."
"Almost everyone carries current prejudices," Amos corrected. He wiped the mashed remnants of the biscuit from his hands and put a new one into his ice cream before handing it off to the youngest at the table.
And this was how Albus would convince the child to come to school.
"Prejudice doesn't change unless it's fought," he starts.
"You want me to go to school," Amos says over top of him.
"What?" Albus says, certain he misheard.
"You want me to go to school," Amos says. "And if I do, and do well, I'll have to fight against prejudice everyday. Everything I want to do will be judged for something I can't control. And strangers will be waiting and hoping that I fail at everything I do. And I'll have to leave the only family I have."
That was a decent summary of what each Muggleborn was asked when they were invited to hogwarts, Albus had to admit.
"Yes," he starts, again. If he presents this right-
"At least you're honest," Amos concedes with grace. "I'll go."
Well, Albus thinks to himself wryly, I am very convincing, aren't I?
"Then let's get ourselves to the bank, after this," he says. "We'll get you the orphan's fund and pick up your supplies."
Amos nods. He reaches over to Tom, who is on his own chair, and pulls him onto his lap. He presses another biscuit into tiny hands and brushes the dark hair away from his head. The affection reminded Albus of the bargaining chip he'd gotten from the Headmaster. (And of the gentle touch of his own father's hand on his head when he was just a boy.)
"The headmaster had an offer for you, about leaving school." He said, happy in interrupt what seemed to be a moment of grief for the young man. "He has offered to have a teacher transport you to the nearest train station each week. From there you could walk back to the Orphanage and tell them you took a train home."
"Who'd waste that amount of money on an orphan?" Amos asked, surprise in his voice. Which was a good point, Albus knew. A trip from scotland to london was . . . not something a child should do weekly on a train.
"The spell is a quick one," Albus assures him. "The walk out of Hogwarts and to the Orphanage will take longer. And we can say that it's part of the scholarship? A bit of magic should stop any questions really." He shrugs, because there are six or seven spells to prevent questions that he can think of off hand.
"What's the spell called?" Amos says as he takes a napkin to Tom's face and begins to clean up their table.
They leave the shop, talking about the different ways of transportation with magic. Amos is brighter, happier, than Albus has seen him before. But even happy, there is something heavy in his eyes. The joy a man takes before battle, Albus thinks; But it's just a thought, Albus has always had a dramatic edge, and no child would think that way about school.
It's the fear that does it.
Anakin was always an adrenaline junkie. And even with a new peaceful life, he finds himself . . . stressed. He's always better, he tells himself, when he has something to fight for. And making sure that Tom isn't going to walk down a street he doesn't fit in, being looked at like that, for an orphans stipend, is something he can make into his cause.
But really it's the fear.
Padme and Anakin bonded over a shared battle (and miles of flowering fields surrounded by lake and mountain as they ran from their fears). They kissed before going to die (and looking out over a lake from a balcony as they felt each other's loneliness). Anakin finds love in the moments before the fall of war (and in a hut made of stone and sand, and in peaceful lake palaces, and in the calm of a Jedi temple).
But Anakin can taste the fear on the back of his throat and it fills him with something he refuses to acknowledge, refuses to call glee, refuses to think about.
Anakin is going to go. He will leave Tom alone for more time than he wants. But it's for Tom. To make a better life for him. (And that can even be true, so long as he doesn't forget it in the battle hunger that eats his soul.)
Anakin is afraid. He is entering a world where he is an outsider (and that ended so well for him last time). He will be powerless, friendless, without even a mentor assigned specifically to him. He will be alone.
He's been in that situation before. And he made something of himself. From a slave, to an unwanted to-old student, to the hero with no fear, commander of armies, and then the second most powerful being in the traversed galaxies.
He wanted this. He wanted it more than anything. And it would make life better for Tom.
If he had power, he could protect Tom.
There is a reason that the first step in any addiction recovery is to recognize and admit the problem. The worst part of Humans is their infuriating inability to recognize their own self destructive patterns.