Chapter 7

September 15, 1932 - November 22, 1932

Living with the future Dark Lord was very comfortable, much better than with Larry. Tom was tidy, which was rare for a boy, and it pleased my old cynic soul. Few things were lying in their corners, and he also had a "pet," a small poisonous viper.

Tom swore that the snake wouldn't do me any harm. I believed in it, and warned him that if I die from the poison, I would ghost him to the end of my days.

"After all, we don't know what our powers are capable of, maybe all these fairy tales and legends: about the risen dead, ghosts, vampires are true?"

Riddle's face went especially pale at this, and he hissed about something with his snake for another half an hour afterward.

In one room, it was comfortable to discuss plans for the future and new ways of development. I told him about mental magic, in a slightly limited way, and it provoked a certain interest, as I expected, just for the mention of mind-reading. As it turned out, he, like me, has some rudiments of this ability, but all he is capable of is barely catching a sense of others' intentions and emotions. But perspective of the development...

"That's... awesome!" Tom's eyes grew as big as a pound, and his voice trailed off, "Mind-reading! How many new possibilities," he walked around the room, waving his hands in excitement, "you can tell instantly if a person is a friend or an enemy. What he's up to, whether he wants to betray you in the most important moment!"

"And it allows to know all his secrets." I add, lying on the bed, throwing my hands behind my head, "it can be a terrible weapon", I smile, "it is necessary to study it!"

"Sure thing!" He jumps on my bed, I have hardly time to move my legs, "how did you say, how do you do it?"

"Uh... I concentrate on my conversation partner, looking into his eyes and wanting to know more, wanting to know what he thinks, what he is hiding" Wolf really did exactly that when he first intuitively used surface legiliments. "I think we should try it on each other first, do you?"

"Come on" he folded his legs in a Turkish manner and straightened up. I sit up straight too, looking into his blue eyes, concentrating on the desire to tap into his memory and feeling the source throbbing in my chest.

Impatience, excitement - it's not my emotion, so it's working. I don't let the joy of a successful attempt grow, I go further and deeper. A picture flashed before my eyes of myself, sitting across from me, looking concentrated. Everything is breaking up.

"Phew" I exhale, the quarter reserve gone.

"How's it going?" Tom is impatiently fidgeting, glaring at me.

"I saw myself... through your eyes," he clapped his hands cheerfully, "and I also felt your emotions," to which he simply hummed, saying:

"Now my turn"

Nothing happened for a while, just the Riddle across the table wrinkling his nose as he tried to concentrate, but then I felt a light touch on my thoughts, as if I'd been touched by a feather in my brain.

"It worked," Riddle ran a tired hand across his sweaty forehead, "it was hard."

"What did you want? It's a mind reading," I grinned. "In future will be a hell more than that. Maybe it would be easier if you used it on ordinary people or animals?"

Tom immediately glanced at the viper in his bed, "I don't want to risk it yet," he said after thinking for a minute or two, "what will it do to Shaisa? Maybe it would mess with her mind and bite us both in the night."

At these words, I shuddered, and Tom laughed, looking at the reaction.

As I expected, Dennis was released two days later. They gave him another final lecture. All in all, the kid was holding up okay, burned out.

I wasn't hiding my communication with Riddle. And how could I hide it, when the actual moving in was organized? Rumors travel fast around the orphanage.

"Wolf, hello!" Paul Haraldson, one of the elders I'd covered in my time, gave me a hand. I shook it. We're not proud men. Not yet.

"Hi" I smile openly and wait for him to continue.

"I found out," he said, "that you're living with Riddle, aren't you?" he leaned against the wall.

The phrase about moving in with a guy was a little off-putting to my ear. But it's normal for a modern person to see hidden hints where none existed. Things are a lot simpler in this time.

"Uh-huh. Larry is not really great roommate, and Tom's room is empty," I snickered, "and he's not that scary, anyway. The little ones made up stories, and everyone believed them."

" "Little ones," huh, are you talking about yourself?" He cackled nastily, "Okay, so you're all right. Because I thought I could help you," he made a "double" with his fist in the air, "you're my buddy! Just ask if you need something! "He clapped me on the shoulder, knocking me back hard enough, and, after giving me one last puff of stale breath, walked imposingly toward the exit.

And there was no desire to offend or abuse in his behavior. It was clearly evident in his emotions and scraps of thought. But a slight sense of support surprised me. Is it possible that people like Paul know how to be grateful? That's a miracle!

And so our daily routine went on: learning, communicating, training, "pumping" mentalism. After a couple of weeks I took a new measurement of the lumos reserve, and it increased to 59 pieces. The training was working! Tom was also checked, and his reserve was 46. He promised to catch up with me in the next year. To which I only grinned, saying that I would not stand still.

Among the near-term plans was to get food and money. But there were a lot of problems with that. To begin with, the boys in rags were chased out of all the "civilized" places in town.

The plan to rob the rich man was also just a plan. And I was not able to take the wallet carefully with my own abilities. First of all, the fact that the wallet will be lying in a pocket or bag hindered us, and we haven`t yet learned how to affect what we can not see with our eyes. Secondly, we need to do it in such a way that the victim did not feel manipulation. I can tell you from my own experience that without specialized charms even a Hogwarts graduate is unlikely to be able to do this, not to mention untrained boys. But we didn't give up on the idea anyway, devoting our time to it.

Despite of the challenges, we managed to sweep a couple of buns from the baker's tray when he turned away. All was done in the best tradition of the dark lords - from behind a corner while no one was looking. The buns flew deftly into the air and came straight to us. It turned out great, but repeating it on the same person isn`t a good idea. And we should have beware of witnesses ... But we ate well that day! For the first time in this body, I felt satiated.

It is true that Tom was afraid that the government might turn on us, subjecting us to experiments or lock us up in a madhouse. And where did he get the chance to hear these stories? It seems that in the 40's people also believed in world conspiracies... Maximum what could happen in our orphanage would be a rich pedophile. Brrr.

I decide not to explain to him yet that the worst thing that could happen to us using magic would be to summon the Aurors. I'll keep that knowledge until Hogwarts, when I can justify it.

I've made progress in Legiliments, too; now I can not only see through other people's eyes, which is quite useless at this stage, but also see other people's recent memories, so far as separate pictures, unconnected to each other.

Also, due to my initiative, we began to practice blocking this possibility. I was just about to say that if we can read minds, so can others, as Riddle hovered, starting to think about the idea. And then I threw in a few more examples of how a person could be mentally programmed to turn a friend into an enemy, or the opposite. When maлe to disgust education, or to make someone like previously unpleasant things. Now Riddle shows so much activity that most of the night, we literally sit in each other's heads instead of sleeping.

Occlumency works out, even though it's mostly intuitive. I told him that I see it as a kind of fortress surrounding your consciousness, as a kind of barrier through which a hypothetical enemy cannot penetrate. I talked about the wall as an example, but I admitted that I wanted something more original and reliable. I told him what concept I am working on:

"Imagine a vast blue lake, with still water, it's crystal clear and infinitely deep. It's also cold. The water is scaldingly icy and it hurts to even put your hand in there. Only at the bottom of it are faint shadows. To get to the memory, you have to dive to the very bottom, to the darkness, to the depths, under tons and tons of icy water, which will press harder and harder for every step you make. When your lungs will burn from the lack of oxygen and your body will be torn from the mass of thousands of tons of water, when your muscles are cramped with cold, and you will not see even your own outstretched arm in total darkness, in this cold and dark realm, you will know despair." As the story progressed, Riddle's eyes opened wider and wider; he could see the picture in his head, and he was already wishing he could see the cold, bottomless lake tearing those "enemies" apart.

"But that's not all," I smirked, "then these mysterious shadows will get closer, turning out to be unimaginable sea creatures, with tentacles and jaws full of razor-sharp teeth. If the enemy, by some miracle, escapes death, they will tear the intruder apart, devouring his flesh, leaving only small pieces that will slowly settle to the very bottom, never reaching it."

Riddle was delighted, saying he would think of something that would be as good as my version. The ordinary wall he now perceived only as an effect of training, nothing more.

Now we crawl out in the mornings like sleepy flies. If we were older, and Tom a girl, someone could assume anything, but that's just the way it is. Fortunately, it doesn't affect our progress in school, since we're both solving Father Ricardo's tasks like nuts. I'm slowly getting my reputation as a "good student" into an "excellent student".

Mrs. Cole takes our successes positively. One day I accidentally met her in the corridor and was praised and even patted over the head. First time I saw Mrs. Cole with a smile on her face! As I later found out by listening to the staff conversations, thanks to Tom and my academic successes, the orphanage could get some extra funding.

The other kids stayed away from us, because they hadn't messed with Riddle in the past, either. And those who did, unpleasant things happened afterward: some fell badly and broke a leg, some were attacked by a rabid dog, one boy got into a fight with a London punk who cut him with a knife. That's what Tom told me when I decided to ask him how he used to live. Now he's got me on his side as well. Not only do I always have Mrs. Cole on my side, but I'm a painful fighter, and I don't care if I'm only seven years old.

I would not say that I immediately "sent all my former friends and buddies," but now I communicate with them even more rarely. And, oddly enough, there's hardly any time for that. School until lunch, then mandatory training in magic, after which there is almost no energy left for anything. When, by some miracle, I still have energy, I drag Riddle to the playground, where we run laps.

How easy it is to manipulate children! A couple of passing phrases and Tom is sure it was his idea to develop endurance.

We didn't have any new friends. Tom despised "those commoners" and I just realized that I would soon be leaving to Hogwarts, so there was no point in making new buddies and wasting time on it.

Gradually I got used to Riddle's viper, which he called Shaisa. Even asked him to teach me a word or two in serpentine. He laughed for a long time as I tried to repeat them. But as I tried, I realized that you can't just learn it. It's a special talent, or people would have learned it before, like a common foreign language. There would have been plenty of Parseltongue experts among mages. Apparently speech is somehow influenced by magic itself.

Taking advantage of Mrs. Cole's good attitude, I managed to find out about the real "Chamber of Secrets." It turns out that the orphanage has a library! And for our academic success, on the wave of a potential investor, the principal gave us access to this holy of holies. It's lucky that Mrs. Cole wasn't some evil bitch like Mrs. Petters. It's just that the orphanage has to be kept under control, and that's why her temper got so hard. The fact that Tom was not yet a bogeyman had played its part, keeping his affairs quiet enough. Otherwise, we would never have seen the house of knowledge, even though it was so small.

However, when she gave us permission to use it, she stared at Riddle and said she wouldn't let "any weird stuff" happen to the books. We had to assure her that if "strange things" were going to happen, it certainly wasn't going to be with the books. She grinned grimly, and signed the form for the librarian.

"She knows," Riddle said as we left her office.

"Sure," I didn't think anyone would compare the "mysterious accidents" happening to my friend's abusers with himself after all. Did she believe the orphanage stories? Or maybe, at that time, such stories still had power? There was no television, people weren't used to seeing propaganda from all angles. Then again, strange things happened. Wizards really do live in this world! So do all sorts of magical creatures. No wonder people believe in it and treat rumors with caution. But still, I didn't worry so much, knowing that this information wouldn't get away from Mrs. Cole.

"You don't look worried," Tom looked at me suspiciously.

"Have you forgotten what I told you about my parents?" He snorted at that.

"That's different," he thought for a second, "okay, you got it."

The library brought a lot of new knowledge. Pity it was forbidden to take books out. The stern madam Furton watched it, as well as our every move. I had to take notes in a notebook stolen from the church when I got there. At this rate it would soon be necessary to carry another notebook, and more than one.

"Look at this," Riddle showed a logarithmic equation found in some old, dusty book on the top shelf.

"I'm not going to let you do that, genius," I whisper, snatching the book out of his hands and putting it aside. "We are not up to that level yet, let the scientists deal with these things."

"You need to know what to aim for," he elbowed me, "what are you looking for?"

"I want to learn a new language, like Latin."

"Why not German? You're German."

Because I know it, that's why. And French and Russian, too. But I'm not going to tell you that, am I? Where, I wonder, did I learn all this when I was placed in an orphanage at the age of one?

"So what? I'll have time to get to German," I shrug it off, "but in the meantime I want to get to grips with the old, dead language. I have a feeling it might still come in handy " given that most British magic is in Latin, then yes, it might come in handy indeed.

"All right, I'll look for something more useful," Tom picked up the heavy book, going in search of something more relevant.