Rating: T

Warnings: None (Unless "damn" counts as profanity, which in my opinion it doesn't really.)

Relationships: None

Chapter 1: Halcyon

Part II

As the year went on, he realized that his worries about what school would bring - bullying, mocking, teachers- were seemingly unfounded. School was tedious but came with a library with the occasional book worthy of reading. None of them mentioned the phoenix, which frustrated Tom, but he made do with what he had. The phoenix was apparently some rare creature that only appeared in historical works, a creature now forgotten in the mind of the modern man.

Though he had no luck with finding anything about the phoenix, nor had he successfully transformed again, he found himself in an unusually optimistic mood. His power - magic, he had named it - was growing each day, and he used it to vanish the teacher's chalk and to steal his schoolmates' money. Controlling it came easily to him; a mere thought, and it was accomplished. None of the others had this power; if they did, he would've known, would've noticed.

His days were a steady routine. School ran from seven in the morning to three in the afternoon. Each morning, he woke at the crack of dawn to shower and practice using his magic; then, when he felt tired, he read until breakfast. After school, he did his homework, which was far too easy since he already knew the material. If he had time, he would walk to the bookstore with Mark. By then, they were going a few times each week, for the cake as much as for the books.

The months passed without incident. On All Hallows' Eve, the others dressed up in self-made costumes patched together from old clothing and paper. Christmas was celebrated with a wilting little tree in the dining room and pudding for desert. New Year's was greeted with an enthusiastic countdown, followed by the caretakers chasing everyone to their rooms.

Tom locked himself up in his own room during these celebrations. On New Year's Eve, in the afternoon, he and Mark went again to the bookstore. When he let it slip that it was his birthday, the owner had exclaimed in surprise, then declared that yet another cake must be baked for the special occasion.

"Really, it's no trouble. I've never celebrated it before." It was half token protest, half honesty. He felt no compulsion to celebrate the day he'd been brought into this world by his vagrant of a mother, but he had never before refused an offer of sweets, especially when it was free.

"Ms. Sowilo's right, Tom. That's probably all the more reason we should celebrate this year," Mark said. His word were lost, as the owner - Ms. Sowilo, as Tom now knew - was already bustling up the stairs to her kitchen. Tom saw no choice but to follow her up for cake.

It even had icing, a rarity now that sugar was so expensive.

After that, he went back to school, learning nothing except what he read in his books while he was supposed to be listening to the teacher. This year, at least, the teacher, a young lady by the name of Miss Carbonell, didn't mind his inattention; in fact, she practically encouraged it, as it meant one less student to be taught.

In short, his life was nothing like it and been before. The war waged on, but it was outside of a little bubble of peace Tom found himself in. The scorn and derision he used to encounter at every corner was gone, and he attributed that to his increased magical ability. A form of unconscious coercion, he hypothesized. External problems had all gone.

The only conflict Tom found was with himself and his troublesome magic, which refused to cooperate in the one endeavor he worked for most arduously. He had improved, of course, but barely - he could turn his skin an alarming shade of pomegranate red, which he knew to be the color of his phoenix form, and once, he had looked in the mirror to find that his irises were dominating his eyes. Objectively, he knew he was already superior to all these mundane beings around him, and that his magic had helped him in many parts of his life. Yet, he still found himself disappointed with each failed transformation.

He would succeed, he vowed. He would. He had all the time in the world. His goal of becoming the best wizard in the world had not changed.

~*l*~

Tom had never had the chance to be naïve. He had been orphaned at infancy and placed in the care of women who had to take care of countless others in addition to him, who had no time to spend playing favorites. Loneliness was a familiar concept to him, and with it came self-sufficiency.

Then, when he was older, the others realized he was different. He was bullied for his intellect and shunned for his his "freakish" nature. Unnaturally small for his age and bookish to boot, he was the perfect target for these children who didn't know better, and who had nothing else to do. Constant vigilance, thinking on his feet, and careful planning were second nature by the time he was six years of age, running from his tormentors and succeeding more often than not.

The memories of running, the memories of being so damn weak that he had no choice but to run, were kept at the forefront of his mind.

And now, replacing them, the memories of running through flaming buildings, screeching metal, falling stones. The Blitz.

These were the memories that drove his desire for knowledge, for magic, and for power.

He remembered the fires, and he labored over thick, old books. He remembered the crash of collapsing buildings, and he lit a fire in his hand. He remembered the dizzying heat, and he ruthlessly smothered the heartbeat of a stray dog in the garden. He never wanted to run again, run through the bombs and blistering flames, run from what seemed to be the rage of an angry god.

No, he wanted to be the one to stand up against everything and scream, "No, no more - this is my country, my land, and you will not take it away from me!" A god in his own right.

But those memories were now oddly ephemeral. Those memories were now exactly that - memories.

The cynicism he used to possess would never have let those memories fade. He blamed it on his newly emerging idealistic nature.

He didn't blame himself for the accident, since he knew he could have done nothing to prevent it; but he did blame himself for being so satisfied, so happy with his new life that he had thought, maybe, everything would be all right..

It had been a Friday evening, not long after school had let out for the summer. Tom, content with his reading material, had opted to stay in his room to work his way through the new volume he'd bought with the money he'd stolen from Cooper. He'd seen no one that day except the cook, when he'd went into the kitchen to steal a bit of food before it was salted.

Unbeknownst to him, Mark had gone to the bookshop that day to celebrate his birthday with Ms. Sowilo, who had promised to bring in some of Mark's favorite foods for dinner. And unbeknownst to all of them, a small metal salt shaker had been thrown minutes earlier by a jealous girl at her flirtatious significant other in the back alley behind the pub. It had been dodged neatly thanks to years of rugby, and it had clanged loudly against the rusty old gas pipe of the building.

The pair had been a bit too busy arguing to notice.

All this meant that when the middle-aged chain smoking bartender from the pub had sat down for a quick smoke on an upturned wooden crate in the alley placed there for this exact purpose, the resulting explosion could only have been described as "quite impressive."

Not only that, but the death count, with the bartender, Mark and Ms. Sowilo, the arguing couple, and the Friday crowd of local blue-collar workers looking for a reason to drink, had also been "quite impressive."

Tom didn't even find out until the next morning by way of a gravely apathetic announcement from the matron during breakfast. Suddenly, everyone was Mark's best friend.

If anyone, his best friend would've been Tom, who had at least spoken with him on a semi-regular basis.

He found that he didn't mourn either of them. He regretted their deaths of course; Mark had been his ticket out to town, and the bookshop a safe haven of knowledge, comfort, and food. He had, quite against his own will, come to like the both of them, too. But he didn't feel the deep sorrow his books described, the emptiness in his heart now that they had gone.

He took all this in stride.

But as if his demons had been waiting for a signal, a kind of clarion call, his life was afterwards one unfortunate event after another.

First, not a week after the wake the orphanage held for Mark, a new boy by the name of Al, orphaned by the same explosion that had killed Mark, arrived. He was large and beefy, toughened by the years of abuse laid on him by his alcoholic father, and seeking revenge against the world for what his father had done to him.

"The world," apparently, meant Tom.

Although Tom was now more powerful than he had ever been, he found himself becoming the frightened child of his past when confronted. His magic didn't help. Snakes could bite him, but only if Al didn't smash them first with a pudgy hand. Coercion didn't work, no matter how strongly Tom tried to project the phrase 'go away,' but Tom correctly attributed that to the fact that Al was dumber than a rock, and didn't really have a mind for Tom to coerce. And pickpocketing, while fun, was no use against the threat of physical violence.

It became a dangerous downward spiral. Instead of attacking Al directly, Tom set his belongings on fire, coerced other children into insulting him, or stole the few belongings Al had brought with him. Al would somehow manage to blame Tom for everything, even those things which had absolutely nothing to do with Tom, and suddenly, Tom was dodging behind bushes and holing himself up in his room all day to avoid the other children, who now lashed out at him in fear.

If he were smarter, he'd have stayed in his room and avoided Al at all costs, but Tom enjoyed watching Al lumber after him, enjoyed taunting him from a safe distance.

Mostly 'harmless play' with other children, as the caretakers would say, but Tom hadn't been careful. This many "accidents" - snakes appearing out of the blue to scare someone off, sudden belligerent behavior in the other children, items disappearing into thin air - was noticeable, and associated with him. When he had returned after the bombing, he had been quiet unobtrusive, and so he had disappeared into the background. But now that he was acting up, as he had before the bombing, and the contempt and the fear returned with a vengeance.

He could fight multiple targets, but when the targets included people with the authority to punish him, to throw him out and leave him in the cold, to take away his books and scant belongings, he was left at a loss. The only things safe from the caretakers were two books and his writing materials, all that he could fit under his floorboards.

Second, three months later, he'd had to go to school to start the next year. At first, he had been assigned to the same lenient teacher he'd had last year, but at the days before the start of the term, she had eloped with a rich American and ran off with him to the U.S. Her replacement was strict and insisted he follow her curriculum, even if he was far too advanced for a single thing she tried to teach him. He had learned from the events of his summer, though - he didn't antagonize her, and instead did all the endless work she gave him. He was never punished, and was in fact seen as the "teacher's pet," but the monotony that ran from seven in the morning to three in the afternoon for five days a week nearly made him wish for a sharp rebuke and a few lashes instead.

Al was in the same class as him. But fortunately, the loud disruptions he caused each time he tried to confront Tom got him sent to the back of the room, far away from Tom's desk.

And the third and last thing that Mark and Sowilo's deaths brought was both the worst and best thing that had ever happened to him.

~*l*~

The winter vacation had been a welcome break for Tom. Christmas that year was celebrated with bottles of whiskey among the caretakers that were inevitably stolen by and split between some of the older children. There were no classes to go to, and half the orphanage had come down with a cold, or something like it. The other half had food poisoning from the one dish the cook hadn't remembered to salt: corned beef.

Sometimes, he wondered about that cook. Perhaps she wasn't quite right in the head - it would certainly explain many things about her.

Tom was a proud member of the half of the orphanage with a simple cold. His wasn't even as bad as everyone else's; a running nose and irritating cough was nowhere as bad as the fevers and congestion that everyone else had. It meant that the caretakers were too busy now to bother with him, anyway, and he had returned to the quiet, withdrawn behavior of the summer, bothering no one so that nobody would bother him.

In hindsight, it wasn't so much a break as the calm before the storm.

Albus Dumbledore came in the afternoon on New Year's Eve, Tom's birthday. Tom had been sitting in his room reading, attempting to forget about the cake and the icing and the books he'd had at Ms. Sowilo's place, about Mark, who had neither liked him nor disliked him but kept him company anyway. It had all been just a year ago, one year exactly. A knock on the door jerked him out of his thoughts, and he warily opened the door. He hadn't been expecting anyone, and unless something drastic had happened, he shouldn't be expecting anyone.

He was greeted by a man in an offensively flamboyant suit of plum velvet that clashed spectacularly with his auburn hair.

"Hello, Tom," the man said, inviting himself in. "I'm Professor Dumbledore, of the Hogwarts - "

"Professor?" Tom asked. So this was Dumbledore, the famous Dumbledore with the phoenix; but that was too much for him right now, caught off guard as he was, so he fixated on the word 'professor.' He knew the word, and it was right there in his mind, but he couldn't quite grasp it. Perhaps he didn't read enough of the right books. "Are you here to take me away too? Like they did when I was younger, away to the - " What was the word? Oh, yes. "The asylum?"

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled, and Tom hated him on the spot, notwithstanding what he could tell Tom about phoenixes and a certain Society. Even worse, the man sat down on his bed and smiled indulgently.

"Oh, no. I wouldn't dream of it. I'm a teacher at a school - the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Tom latched onto that immediately, mind whirling. Witchcraft? Wizardry? And a school for it, too - that would imply that there were enough people, at least in Britain, with the capacity for magic that a school of magic was necessary. And this man in front of him, he was a wizard too. He could do all the things Tom could do. Suddenly, the absence of Mark and Ms. Sowilo didn't matter anymore. They were gone, and so what? So what, if this was what he received in return for their deaths?

They hadn't known him. Not like this man could know him.

"I can see you're familiar with magic," Dumbledore continued. "You've probably experienced some accidental magic. Changing your skin color, perhaps, or growing out a bad haircut?"

"I can make people do I want," Tom offered, excited. For the first time, he had found someone he liked, someone he wanted to impress. It was all spilling out of him with little regard for caution. "Set things on fire, make things disappear - I once turned into a - "

Dumbledore held up a hand, his eyes darkening. Tom felt himself deflating, but, remembering himself, didn't show it. Had he said too much? Perhaps that wasn't the kind of magic he was supposed to be doing. Perhaps they didn't want him anymore. He felt himself beginning to panic, because even a different kind of magic was better than no magic at all. He knew he was jumping to conclusions, but couldn't reign himself in. Get a bloody hold on yourself, he thought. You are a wizard, and you will be a god. Act like it.

"I don't need the full list," Dumbledore said, but Tom could tell that that wasn't what the man had been thinking. "In the meantime, I'd like to inform you that we don't endorse bullying at Hogwarts. If you are being bullied, you will tell a teacher, and they will take care of it. Coercing others, setting them on fire - none of that will be allowed."

He was - he was chastising him. Tom, who was magical, who was smarter and better than everyone else, who was, apparently, a wizard. What right did this Dumbledore have to scold him as he would a child, after Tom had been left alone for so long in this cruel place where acting like a child would only get him hurt?

For that matter, what proof did he have that Dumbledore wasn't here to bring him to an asylum? Tom had just as good as confessed to his apparent madness.

Proof. He needed proof.

He ignored what Dumbledore had said, and asked, "And you - are you a wizard too?"

Both of Dumbledore's eyebrows rose. "Well, of course, Tom. I'm the - "

"Prove it."

Dumbledore's eyes sharpened as he reached into his suit pocket and pulled out what looked to be a simple stick. But with a flick of it towards the floor, suddenly, a floorboard had disappeared, revealing his books and papers.

Suddenly panicked, Tom looked up at Dumbledore, but the man wasn't looking at the contents of his hideaway. Instead, he was watching Tom, as if for his reaction. Tom forced himself to calm down; the books were both his, not the orphanage's; they'd been bought from Ms. Sowilo at a very low price. And the paper and graphite had been stolen so long ago that he doubted anyone would make the connection.

Dumbledore seemed slightly disappointed, though, as if he had been hoping to find something else.

"Now, Tom. What I said about bullying: was all that clear?"

Tom nodded his assent, then cleared his throat. "Yes, sir. I understand."

Dumbledore was silent for a moment, and Tom wondered if maybe that wasn't enough. What did he want him to do - get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness? He wondered if he was too proud to do that, if it came down to it. He didn't know; was humiliation worth the rewards?

"As long as we're clear," Dumbledore said. "I have your letter right here. It will tell you how to get to Hogwarts, when, and what you will need to bring."

School supplies? But Tom barely had any money. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that Tom was dirt poor and didn't rightfully own anything at all. Every coin he had, every book he'd bought, had been the result of his pickpocketing skills. But, he reasoned, pickpocketing was only a job, illegal as it was, and every penny he had was earned.

Not that Dumbledore needed to know that.

"Excuse me, sir," Tom said. "But I haven't got any money of my own - my mother was poor and left nothing for me, and I'm not nearly old enough to be hired for a job."

"Hogwarts will pay for it. There is a special account for this exact purpose."

This exact purpose - did magical children often end up stranded among these mundane humans with nothing to their names? Or maybe the account had been created for poor wizards whose children couldn't afford the supplies, but Tom couldn't see how anyone magical could ever be poor. Not with this amount of power.

"I can see you have many questions," Dumbledore said. "And they will all be answered in due time. You can consider the offer to attend Hogwarts, and I, or another member of the Hogwarts staff, will return on July the seventh for your answer, and to take you out to buy your supplies if you accept. In the meantime, you should know that revealing your abilities, or the existence of a magical world, is strictly illegal." He looked at Tom over his spectacles, eyes hard. "I trust that any future magical incidents will be entirely accidental."

Tom swallowed and stood, nodding his assent.

"Now, I must be going. Have a good day." With a nod of his head, Dumbledore was out of the door, and out of Tom's life, as quickly as he had entered it.

Tom stood there for a while, hearing Dumbledore and the matron conversing - "How was he, Mr. Dumberton?" - "Oh, perfectly fine. He's a very talented young boy - " and here, their voices faded out as they went down the stairs. Somehow, Tom didn't think that "talented" was really meant as a good thing.

The letter was still in his hand. A quick scan told him that the first day of school would be on September the first, and there would be a train leaving from King's Cross Station, Platform 9 3/4. There was another piece of paper which appeared to be the supply list.

He bowed his head slightly, suddenly exhausted.

A magical school, then. And, it seemed, a magical world, all of which he knew nothing about. He wished he had been told more - where he could find a good book on real magic, perhaps. There was so much to learn. How was he to survive in an entirely new world with no information to go on?

He had thought that his magic had set him apart from the rest of the world, and in the space of ten minutes, he had had this illusion shattered. But none of his promises about becoming the most powerful wizard to date had to change. If anything, his goal was now even more attainable. With real books on the subject, with teachers - he wouldn't have to rely purely on myths and legends.

He turned away from the door, which he had been staring at since Dumbledore left. It was slightly ajar, since Dumbledore had not closed it fully behind him.

Tom closed his eyes and inhaled, clenching his fists. Then he opened his eyes again and strode over the shut the door firmly. There was no time to waste. He needed books written by wizards, books with accurate information, more than anything else, but in the meantime, he had some magic to practice, new skills to learn.

After all, it wouldn't do for him to arrive at school behind on magic.

Notes:

5. Miss Carbonell, is, in fact, Maria Carbonell, and the rich American she runs off with is one Howard Stark. She is American in Marvel 616 canon.

6. I think I just gave Tom a lifelong fear of salt. Oops. It's actually hilarious for several reasons. *cough*Supernatural*cough*

7. I don't know that the series of events that led to Mark and Sowilo's deaths is entirely plausible. In fact, it's probably not, since I have no idea how these things work.

8. Tom's meeting with Dumbledore is different, obviously. This is because my Tom is not canon Tom. (Unless canon Tom was a phoenix.)

9. I apologize for my crappy characterization of canon characters. Also, dialogue really isn't my thing.

11. Please review. Tell me what you think of my writing or of the characterizations, and what you would like to see. There is no outline for this story, even though I am usually very fastidious about plot and continuity and such. So I will take into account everything you say.

12. Thanks to my beta, a real life casual acquaintance of mine. (I don't remember if I have promoted her to friend yet.)

13. There is more information about the future of this fic on our profile.