A recent series of strange incidents had the establishment of the London Zoological Society on edge. After all, they were supposed to be experts on animals and animal behaviour. They knew their trade well and their employees of course knew what to expect from their many decades of experience, working with, and scientific observation of their animal wards…
But what they were seeing now was wholly unexpected. Never before had they seen animals acting in such an apparent arbitrary, capricious, and often disturbing manner. Sometimes they were uncharacteristically aggressive without reason, attacking keepers who were feeding them. Or they even managed to cleverly escape from their enclosures which was supposed to be beyond their natural limits of animal intelligence as if there was someone directing them and they were merely following instructions…
There had also been a sharp, inexplicable rise in visitor accidents and two children climbed into bear grottoes only to be mauled and the bears shot dead by the thankfully alert keeper. And then there were the fights. Elephants trampling one another, rhinos goring each other to the death, birds clawing ferociously, monkeys digging up and hurling rocks at each other and at shocked guests…
In spite of all this commotion and controversy which caused the directors at London Zoo many late-night headaches and even lawsuits, attendance was on the increase as the animals were often much more active and alert than they had any reason to be for some reason. That was the supreme irony because their apparent "misfortune" helped line their pockets at a time when the zoo was facing bankruptcy due to declining public interest. But it was dangerous because if the humans could no longer understand and thus anticipate animal behaviour, then their ability to control them would no longer be assured.
All this gave Tom Riddle, a frequent visitor, all kinds of joy and ecstatic amusement. He loved the ability to flaunt his powers in public without being caught. His powers were growing daily as he experimented with different methods of mental control over many diverse animals. London Zoo had one of the largest collections of animals with nearly 900 species from across the world and it was all conveniently confined within just thirty acres. He could literally pass by thousands of animals within the space of a morning and test his powers freely on them.
He could sense the animals, feel the depths of their depression, boredom, or just pure sloth as they sat in their concrete cages day after day stripped of all dignity and sense of self and his contempt for both them and the muggles who kept them there grew daily. At first, he had entertained the guests by forcing the animals to fight or perform certain circus acts but later grew bored and instead took to helping some animals escape by picking locks with appropriate tools. Finally, when that become tiresome, he took to controlling guests and compelling them to do dangerous things around the animals just to observe their natural, animalistic reactions.
But he knew he couldn't take things too far and he knew where to draw the line to avoid the attention of the magical authorities. No one knew of his abilities of compulsion over non-magical beings (muggles and animals alike) and so they had no reason to suspect him.
So on most weekends, Tom would lie to his parents about playing or any kind of excuse and apparate to London. He would appear in a spot of dense trees at Hyde Park where visibility was poor and head for the zoo at Regent's Park just before it opened. Then he would apparate again into the visitor bathrooms inside the zoo just as it opened its doors for the day.
One of his favourite places to visit at the zoo was the snake section inside the Reptile House. The snakes knew he was a Speaker and they pleaded with him to help them escape from their glass exhibits but Tom would always decline. It would be going too far if he were to magically break the glass because then he might get caught by the Ministry. But Tom regularly felt angry at muggles for confining so many varieties of snakes in small enclosures and often felt the need to resist the urge to just set them on the muggles crowds who after all, paid for their captivity.
The only beings he couldn't compel to do his bidding, who could resist, (besides magical witches and wizards) that he had encountered were snakes. He could persuade them, yes, and he was often very persuasive but they always had the agency to say no to him which both fascinated and infuriated Tom.
On one fateful visit, he had just been watching a disgustingly obese father and son pair rap their fat knuckles on glass which was typically what the visitors did and moved closer to have a turn at conversing with the boa constrictor that he knew well when he froze to hear the snake's tongue hiss from another pair of human lips.
An altercation, as Tom continued to observe, and the boy was knocked hard to the floor by someone who obviously didn't look like his brother and the next second, the glass in the enclosure simply vanished to Tom's amazement as the boa constrictor slithered out expressing its gratitude to the fallen boy as the rest of the reptile house erupted in pandemonium and the visitors fled in terror.
The boy was extremely thin and rather short and wearing what seemed like inappropriate nearly adult-sized clothes and Tom's first thought as he got to his feet was that he looked rather pathetic and beat-down with his broken spectacles. But surprisingly, his gaze as Tom's eyes met his was intensely defiant.
"You don't realise what it is you are speaking, do you?" Tom pressed him rather aggressively. He now knew he was not the only one with the gift and that dearth of specialness left a hole inside of him that even he had to admit.
The boy nearly jumped in surprise as he turned around to hear Tom questioning him in a language he knew to be foreign but was also familiar at once.
"It was the same for me when I first discovered the gift and it took several attempts before I became self-aware…"
"This is… I was talking to snakes wasn't I? This is their language? How come I can talk to animals?"
Tom instantly intuited he was muggle-born. He knew he knew nothing about the magical world and the rules prohibiting Tom were clear. But he also knew that no one in the Ministry could even understand parselmouth and he personally knew how it felt to be left in the dark as his powers manifested and no one was giving him any answers.
For some reason, he sensed a familiarity from the boy that he couldn't really put a handle on but then reached into his pocket and took out a copy of the zoo brochure.
"Watch carefully and learn." As his eyes were fixated on the green brochure, Tom turned it brown. And then purple. And then back to green.
"It's not a trick," Tom hissed as he gave the brochure to him to examine. "Very impressive work with the glass just now-"
"That wasn't-"
"You can do magic because you are a wizard. Now your parents might not be magical but you have powers that they can't even begin to contemplate."
And as the boy looked on in utter disbelief, Tom focused his powers. Vanishing was probably the most difficult thing he had managed to accomplish and it was exceptional that this boy in front of him could vanish something that large, even if it was only glass. He focused his gaze on the brochure clutched in the boy's hands and willed it out of existence. It flickered and then collapsed fully into the void vanishing from the visible world as the boy was suddenly left holding nothing in shock.
"Now you believe me," Tom said switching back to English as the boy stood in stunned silence. "I'd like to inquire your name."
"My name's Harry Potter," the somewhat intimidated boy said with a moment of hesitation. The name didn't register with Tom at all.
"Tom Riddle," he said and held out his hand. He wanted to say more but with the boy's furious guardians coming back for him now they could no longer converse in private.
Curiously, as they shook hands Tom experienced a shocking, terrible scalding burn that left him grimacing as he dropped the handshake immediately. As the boy's face turned to concern, Tom backed away and fled the scene.
He had never felt such pain in his life and as he looked down on his right hand, he noticed it was terribly scalded and burned. He had wanted to scream. But he could not afford to show weakness in front of another probably very powerful wizard... Tom rushed into the nearest bathroom and plunged his hand into ice water and kept it there for minutes before breathing a sigh of relief. He didn't think it was deliberate, but maybe it was and the boy had wanted to demonstrate dominance over him? But he didn't know how it was possible to channel such a burn through a mere handshake without your own hand being scalded as well…