1938
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Hermione Granger was still undecided about whether or not she liked Tom Riddle, but she did know for certain that he was her only friend.
But it wasn't as if you had to like people to be friends with them. In the military history books she'd bought for Tom, she'd read that nations formed alliances with other nations they didn't like all the time. England had fought a Hundred Years' War with France—and it was over six hundred years of conflicts altogether, if she remembered correctly—yet Britain and France had allied in the last Great War. The same could be said about the Americans, who had fought Britain for only a fraction of that time, but their shared history was no less contentious.
So there it was. You didn't necessarily have to agree with someone to remain civil; if you had the patience to see past one another's irreversible differences then you could spot the common values and complementary strengths.
She occasionally felt a bit uneasy having to justify her friendship with Tom Riddle, but then one of his letters would arrive and the lingering doubts would be settled. Because that penmanship! She'd never met a boy who could write like that, whose penmanship was so crisp, whose facility and diction made her feel like she was a lady scholar corresponding with her man of letters, and not just a child writing to another child from across the boroughs of London.
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Hermione,
I respectfully disagree with you on the subject of criminal justice. I've always found penal transportation a practical, and yes, more merciful system of rehabilitation compared to the very permanent alternative. Pity they stopped it by 1850; I expect by then Parliament had realised that railway sleepers don't lay themselves...
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The first parcels she sent him contained sweets and tinned shortbreads, but after a few comments on their nutritional value, she'd ended up sending stamps for return postage and blank exercise books. That later turned to interesting periodicals, advanced textbooks, and most recently, Latin primers. Well, she couldn't fault him for having eclectic tastes.
Her parents probably wouldn't approve of her spending most of her pocket money on gift parcels, but all the books she'd bought for him she first read herself, and there was nothing unusual about Hermione spending half her weekend browsing newsstands and bookshops.
What would they scold her about anyway? Did they want to deprive an already deprived orphan of the kindness he would get from nowhere else? He had no parents, and despite the orphanage matron's yammering on about how all her young charges were a family, it was difficult to spot any signs of attachment or affection amongst the orphans, and impossible to discern with regards to Tom himself.
And it wasn't as if Hermione's mum and dad would want to deprive her of her only friend. Hermione had always been such an odd duck, a single child labelled Precocious at six years old, Solitary at seven, and by eight, she was Peculiar, for the strange incidents that happened in her presence but could not be blamed on anyone—mysterious malfunctioning locks, burst pipes, and small fires.
She'd thought she was going mad for the longest time.
She still didn't know if she was mad or not. Having delved into books to find answers—because there were answers, it was only a matter of how many books she needed to go through to find it—she had come up with a few explanations, but none of them were particularly satisfying. It was after she'd met Tom Riddle for the second time that she'd looked into the phenomenon of ESP and had been discouraged by how ridiculous it was. Spirit mediums and fortune telling? What nonsense!
She'd rather believe Tom Riddle was an opera virtuoso in potentia (on top of all of his academic talents) than some kind of—of telepath.
It was in a bout of frustration at the library archives that she'd discovered another explanation: Legerdemain.
Other people could deal and swap playing cards with a simple flick of the wrist. Hermione could turn the pages of a book without laying a finger on them. It was an ability she'd discovered hearing the library closure announcement. She'd panicked at the pile of books as yet unopened, and the page she had been skim-reading quivered like the wings of a butterfly, and then under her trembling fingers and frightened gaze one page had turned to the next, and the next, until it reached the back cover and closed with a thump.
She could replicate it too, one success per every five attempts. As long as she combined concentration (picturing the vanes of a windmill, the pattern of turning sheaves in a paddleboat wheel, spokes arrayed around the spinning axle of a bicycle tyre) and the memory of urgency, desperation, need.
In the end, Hermione decided she wasn't mad. They were only parlour tricks, like the ones seen in stage shows. There was surely another, better rational explanation—only she hadn't found yet it. Like magnetic attraction. Or static discharges and bioelectrical currents.
She half wondered if Tom Riddle was the mad one.
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...You argue that an autocratic system is susceptible to regicide and power vacuums. I argue that the problem of the fallible system would be solved if the autocrat himself were infallible. Alexander and Napoleon, for all their victories and achievements, were failures: flawed not only in character, but in judgement.
I, however, am an excellent judge of character. You see, Hermione, I've always been able to tell when people are lying to me, or at the very least, when their intentions toward me are dishonest, and whether they are hiding something they'd rather I not know. It's been a very useful ability; it was how I confirmed it was worth making your acquaintance, something I do not regret. I've often wondered if this natural intuition of mine could be useful had I been in their position...
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Tom had a very... forceful personality.
Oh, he could be charming when he wanted to be (her mother had commented on his sweet manners the morning after they'd taken him to the opera) but of the handful of times Hermione had met him in person, he'd always given the impression of a sort of feral intensity. As if his skin—his life—was too small, too confining, and he was restlessly anticipating the day where he would burst out of it like a moulted carapace.
She tried not to judge him too harshly. It wasn't Tom's fault where he was born; if she lived in an orphanage, it would not be likely she'd have come out of it as well-adjusted as he seemed to be.
(Sometimes when their debates became heated, it provoked one of his rare moments of candour, and he came off as delusional.)
But it wasn't as if he'd done anything to hurt her. The subjects of their debates were firmly placed in the realm of the hypothetical. And even if Tom did cause some form of offence, friends made allowances for one another's faults.
That's what friendship was about.
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His fortnightly letters arrived every Tuesday morning, which meant Tom must have posted them during the weekend.
Hermione would tuck the freshly delivered envelope into her schoolbag and spend half the morning's lessons thinking about what Tom had written her, if he'd read the book she'd sent him... Then when lunch came, she'd sit in a shaded corner of the school quadrangle overlooked by the staffroom window and open his letter.
It was like unwrapping a gift.
(It was like having a friend eat lunch with her.)
She savoured his words; she imagined that he was in school right now, St. Mary's at Nine Elms, in the middle of his lunch recess. She pictured him sitting under a tree and reading her books, dark eyes devouring words she'd underlined and annotated, his fingers tracing the edges of pages, pages that had turned under her upraised hands—without needing her hands at all—like the spring-powered dial of a rotary telephone.
Hermione's days flew by without incident, the passage of time marked by a stream of letters that dropped through the family mail slot.
Some time after the middle of the year—not too long after Hermione had congratulated Tom for his Year Five scores listed as a newspaper commendation—a letter arrived that did not come via Royal Mail. Most unusually, it was delivered by hand on a Saturday afternoon in late July, by a well-dressed man with sharp, perceptive eyes and a benign smile lifting up the corners of his auburn beard.
He wore a smartly cut suit in bright teal-green velvet, complemented by a silk damask waistcoat patterned with a tessellating design of golden feathers and flames. He called himself Professor and Wizard and the dependable cogs in the well-oiled machine that was Hermione's mind ground themselves into a screeching halt.
Wizard.
Witch.
The cogs sought for traction, a base point; the gears and teeth within her skull sunk into facts she'd just learned, observations she'd long known, searching for commonalities and correlations that had to be there, were there all along.
There all along, but it was only now that someone thought it convenient to tell her.
Magic.
She was at once captivated and frustrated; there was delight in getting answers to the questions she'd been asking for years, and in equal measure, a burning dissatisfaction in being denied the chance to find the answers herself. Because no matter how hard she'd looked, the answers were nowhere to be found, not in the local library, or all the bookshops of central London, or the academic archives at the university she'd visited with her father whenever he met with his Alumnus Society. Not for people of their heritage, those who couldn't see the publican's door hidden in plain sight on the high street at Charing Cross, who couldn't cross the sixth brick pillar from the gate at King's Cross Station.
Delight, frustration, and the final, welcome warmth of vindication. She hadn't been going mad.
Hermione's father observed the wizard, Professor Dumbledore, over the top of his newspaper, a colourful figure looking out of place in the sedate creams and browns of the family's formal sitting room. Hermione's mum set out a tray of tea and jam-filled shortbreads, before settling down on a loveseat, an open notebook balanced on her knee to take the Professor's information down in shorthand.
They'd been unsettled ever since the Professor waved his wand and made the legs of their coffee table sprout roots and branches and transform into an attractive leafy indoor trellis—with a level shelf in the middle to hold the tea tray and porcelain tea set. To Hermione's gratitude, her parents' anxiety seemed to be due to this strange man in their home, and not by the revelation that she could do the same things he did.
Mum and Dad seemed to be relieved on her behalf, and echoed her sentiments about the lack of answers until now, just a couple of months before Hermione was expected to go to a prestigious girls' preparatory school, one that she'd had to pass entry tests years ago to put her name on a waiting list. They'd already bought her the uniforms and textbooks, because Hermione was the type of student who preferred to show up on the first day with a study plan for the whole year's syllabus.
"I don't suppose I'll ever be a doctor, then," Hermione said, with a sigh of disappointment. "If it's dangerous to go untrained in magic, then I'll have to go to your school, and not to Donwell Prep."
"If you are interested in the field of medicine," Professor Dumbledore explained in a calm, assured voice, "the magical occupation of a Mediwitch or Mediwizard is our closest equivalent to, ah, I suppose, a General Practitioner in Muggle terms. Qualification for a specialty field is done through a Healing Mastery program, which is an apprenticeship undertaken after Hogwarts graduation and can last anywhere from three to eight years. This would be a specialisation in, for example, spell or curse damage, mind Healing, magical midwifery, or contagious illnesses."
"I do hope it's a position of respect in your society," Dr. Granger remarked, a contemplative frown wrinkling his forehead. Professor Dumbledore nodded in affirmation. "I don't suppose it pays well? We don't mind supporting Hermione however long she needs it after graduation, but she's always been of an independent disposition. And barring a ladies' boarding house, there's few respectable places that would take an independent girl like our Hermione, if she's reliant on a single income."
"I trained as a nurse before marrying," said Mrs. Granger, looking up from her notebook. "They didn't pay as much as we deserved, because the hospital's directors were expecting high turnover—they thought we'd go off and get married right after we completed training. But it led to most of us marrying just so we could afford to live in the city. It was a rather convoluted cycle, and a self-perpetuating one at that."
"Ah, I see," said Dumbledore, with a look of dawning understanding. "Healer trainees receive the same wages, whether they are wizards or witches. We don't distinguish between the sexes in our world, as all of us who are born with the potential are considered equally magical." A shadow crossed his features, and the kindly lines that wove around the corners of his eyes pinched together in rumination.
"Some of us marry quite young, right after finishing school—that is their prerogative, of course, and some choose not to marry at all if they are independently minded; I am one such, and I have never witnessed it held against me. Early marriage amongst our kind is usually due to a traditional upbringing than economic necessity. Economic disadvantage is never as severe as it is in the Muggle world, when most of our needs can be managed by magic. We can't conjure food—you'll find out more about it by Fifth Year—but creating shelter and warmth and clothes from very little or nothing at all? Certainly possible, for those who have the skill for it.
"But to return to what I mentioned earlier, about these traditionalists. They are a small fraction of our population, but can be disproportionately vocal at times, and harbour beliefs that I, and indeed many others, consider outmoded and unenlightened. Chief among those is their attitude regarding one's magical heritage, which is referred to by that set, in common terms, as one's 'blood status'..."
Dumbledore spoke in his tenured lecturer's voice, genial in all respects. But Hermione could sense the tension in her father's shoulders, and the white knuckles of her mother's hands where she clutched her fountain pen and stabbed the nib into the paper in the abbreviated strokes of phonetic shorthand. Hermione's own hands scrunched up the hem of her skirt.
By the time Hermione's mum had the kettle on for a second pot of tea, Hermione felt exhausted.
"It's better to know now than find out later, or not know at all," she murmured, picking up a biscuit. "Even if it ruins the first impression I have of magic." Hermione glanced up at Dumbledore, who was inspecting the framed anatomical lithographs that decorated the walls of the Grangers' sitting room. "Professor, do you tell this to all the Muggleborns you visit? I can't help imagining that you'd be scaring half the families away from magic."
"I give a general introduction to most potential students," said Dumbledore. "It usually takes years to acclimate to the wizarding world; beyond the basics, I am limited to answering as many questions as I'm asked. And few have asked as many questions as you have. But Hogwarts' unofficial motto is that 'help is always given to those who ask for it', and I'm as much partial to that one as our official motto."
"What is the official motto?" asked Dr. Granger.
"'Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus'," Dumbledore replied, his eyes beaming behind his half-moon spectacles. "The Hogwarts founders' sense of humour is a tidbit of trivia unfortunately lost to the veils of time."
"'Dragon... sleep... not... something'," Hermione puzzled out, brow furrowed. Her father seemed to have gotten it already. "Tom would figure it out faster than me," she grumbled. "I gave him our Latin primers because he wanted to study for matriculation."
It was in that instant that Hermione remembered her one and only friend, Tom Riddle.
How will Tom write to me when I'm away at school? It's in Scotland—the postage will take longer and the stamps more expensive. I'll have to send him the money, or the stamps, and I'll have to explain why I'm not going to Donwell Prep anymore, when I'd been harping on it for months as the best school for career-minded young ladies. And we won't be able to exchange curriculum notes anymore; he'll be learning English grammar and algebra, and I'll be studying magic.
Magic.
Dumbledore explained the concept of accidental magic. Unusual phenomena occurring around a magical child. Unintentional magical outbursts in moments of intense emotion. But it can be controlled consciously, some of the time. I've controlled it before.
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...You see, Hermione, I've always been able to tell when people are lying to me...
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"Professor," Hermione asked, turning to Dumbledore, "is it possible to tell when people are lying with magic?"
Dumbledore's face became grave, but his eyes hadn't lost their warmth. "It is indeed possible, but considered an extremely obscure branch of magic, and one that is not taught at Hogwarts. Where might you have heard of it, Miss Granger?"
Hermione couldn't miss his sudden curiosity; she was feeling the same thing once she'd heard the word 'obscure'.
"I know a boy who said he could... sense lies, I suppose," said Hermione, slightly nervous. "He has been my dearest friend for years. And he's much like me—we both make top marks every year, it's a bit of a competition between us—and he once did something strange that I could never find a sensible, scientific explanation for. Like he was speaking in my head, or something like that—it sounded so ridiculous and I thought I was just imagining it." She gazed up at Professor Dumbledore, an idea firming in her mind. "He's my age, eleven years old, just a few months younger than I am. I think he might be—could he be a—Professor, do you have a list of the Muggleborn students that you bring invitations to?"
"We have an enchanted quill in the Headmaster's office that makes a list automatically," said Dumbledore. "We sort out the addresses that are in Muggle areas, referenced against our existing list of wizarding homes."
"Do you know if someone by the name of Riddle is on it?" Hermione asked. "Tom Riddle? He lives in South London, in Wool's Orphanage."
"I believe I have seen that name on this year's intake. The address was somewhat unusual," Dumbledore conceded. "My list is sorted alphabetically, so his visit would be sometime next week, or the week after."
Tom is a wizard.
And I'm a witch.
He'll be so pleased when he finds out. I never told him about what I could do, or the accidents at school that made everyone think I was a graceless clod on top of being an overbearing know-it-all. It stands to reason that he's never told me about all the things he can do, Hermione realised. If he knows something, he isn't one to share it with the world. Heavens, he must have thought he was going mad too.
"Sir, when you visit Tom," Hermione spoke eagerly, thinking of how wonderful it was that she and Tom could go to school together, and see each other every day. "Can you bring him some books? Mum and Dad bought me the school textbooks for Year Six, but since I won't be needing them, Tom can have them. I've already finished reading them—and I promised them to Tom when I was done with them, since I was taking subjects his local comprehensive didn't offer."
At Dumbledore's nod, she ran upstairs and fetched the heavy stack of books she was supposed to take to school in September. A Muggle school. Muggle. Such a strange new word, and one of many she'd learned today, but the concepts they described seemed to make sense to her, naturally so. It was as if she'd known forever that she was different, but hadn't the words—until now—to bring her idle speculations into the world of concrete fact.
She still half-believed that this was all a dream, and she'd wake up tomorrow morning unaware of a parallel world that contained magic. It seemed too fantastical to be real.
Law and Governance of Britain and Her Territories, Intermediate Geometry, Physical Sciences G6, Students' World Geography...
She piled them up and brought them to Dumbledore, who raised his eyebrow at the weight of them, drew his wand, and shrunk them down so that each book was the size of a matchbox. They disappeared into a pocket within his teal velvet coat.
"I'll see you come September first, Miss Granger," said Dumbledore amiably, as he put his wand away and shook Dr. Granger's hand. He gave a short bow to Mrs. Granger and nodded at Hermione, who gripped the thick sheaf of papers from her Hogwarts letter as fiercely as if she was afraid they'd float away.
"Yes, Sir," said Hermione. "Please give Tom my regards when you visit him, Professor."
When Professor Dumbledore left, Hermione was still shaking with excitement, although it had started to morph into a sense of itching anxiety. She had only a month and a few days left before the start of term, and she hadn't read through her textbooks, because she hadn't even bought them.
With trembling hands, she dug into her desk drawer and peeled out a sheet of stationery paper and an envelope, stamp already affixed to the top right corner.
The pen nib hovered over the paper, her account of the day taking shape in jagged swipes and wobbly lines. It flowed out in a feverish pace, the paper smeared in the margins where Hermione had forged ahead without a second's pause for the ink to dry.
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Dear Tom,
Today, we had the most exciting caller drop in for tea...