1938
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Tom learned a new set of cultural mores that autumn. He saw things he recognised, but they were mutated and combined with the magical variation Hogwarts produced.
Hogwarts' food was one mark of difference. The food was hearty and familiar British fare: meats, breads, pickles, and puddings. But it came with goblets of over-sweet pumpkin juice instead of the watery powdered milk he was used to. The school uniforms were to be worn pressed neatly and tucked in to no one's surprise, but were hidden beneath the loose, draping folds of a wizard's robe.
The school was located in Scotland, and the language of instruction was English, although no one commented on the wide range of regional dialects he heard amongst the student population. Nevertheless, his vocabulary and elocution were still scrutinised, not so much as for indications of social class, but rather any sign of partisan sympathies. The eyes of his Slytherin housemates didn't search for the same set of subliminal cues as a class-conscious Londoner would—for example, how one took their tea and handled the service accoutrements, from the sugar tongs to the slotted spoon. The kind of knot one used in their neckties, or the degree of sharpness one could coax out of their shirt collars with stays and starch and hot irons.
But it was still elitism, just a different flavour of it than he was used to.
To his disappointment, Wizarding Britain wasn't far removed from the Britain he had been glad to leave behind.
Every society had its strata, and the topmost layer would always be the corps d'élite; in this matter, Wizarding Britain was much the same. There was a new set of people who considered themselves his social superiors by right of birth, by the significance accrued like the dust of centuries on a long-established name.
They weren't Windsor-Mountbatten or Farnsleigh-St. Germain. They were Black, Malfoy, Lestrange, and Rosier, and together they called themselves the "Sacred Twenty-Eight".
It was a monumental effort in the aim of self-aggrandisement, couldn't they see it? The book ("stud-book" was a fitting name for what it was) had been published by Nott's father only a few years ago, and if Nott the Elder had been objective in his definitions of "Sacred" and "Pure" upon making his list, then Tom would go take a swan dive into the Black Lake in mid-winter.
When he had gone to settle his things into the stone-lined cellar of the shared dormitory, he'd been introduced to a new world of rude vocabulary by the boys in his year squabbling over who got what bed, because no one wanted the bed closest to the boy with a Muggle name and an unknown blood status. It was clear from the coarse language spouting from their outraged, snarling faces that they'd got well-bred confused with inbred.
Business as usual, Tom supposed. He was used to—resigned to—being surrounded by people he despised, much to his eternal regret, and Hogwarts was no different than Wool's in that respect.
But within the splendour of ancient stones and rugged valleys that made up the school and grounds was one single point of familiarity.
Hermione Granger.
She was a witch. She could perform magic. She was Special.
And she'd hidden it from him.
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...Tom, he said he's the Deputy Headmaster of a school for people just like us. Magic! I'd never have guessed. It still doesn't make sense to me, but in a way it explains everything. All the accidents that I thought were just coincidence, or put down to bad luck. Although in this year and the last, it seemed experimenting with conscious control led to fewer unfortunate incidents. I used to have them once every two months or so since I was seven. I don't suppose you had the same growing up...
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Tom wasn't used to people hiding things from him, not something of this magnitude. With Hermione, it was a result of their only meeting a handful of times a year, whenever her mother brought hand-me-downs to the orphanage, or when her parents invited him to an afternoon outing during term holidays. He couldn't discern truth and lies from her words on paper.
But now...
Hermione lived in the same castle. He could find her in person, in class. Talk to her, look her in the eyes and see what else she hid from him, make her tell the truth—
But—
He didn't want to talk to her.
She'd betrayed him on a second, more severe count. She'd told Albus Dumbledore about him, about his abilities, a week before they were due to officially meet. And so Dumbledore had come to the gates of Wool's in an extravagant ensemble of plum velvet, preconceptions already formed. He'd arrived on the scene warned and wary about Tom Riddle, the quiet orphan boy with an uncanny dark gaze, who had a room to himself filled with books where the other boys of his age had to share.
At least Dumbledore didn't get all of his secrets. No one knew he could talk to snakes, not even Hermione, or knew that the rabbit had died of unnatural causes. He'd taken pains to be more subtle after the orphanage had gotten more wealthy, regular visitors—ones who liked the idea of sponsoring an impoverished child, but not the idea of bringing it into their own home.
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"How did you come by such an ability?" the man asked in his unbearably kind voice, settling himself on Tom's thin mattress with a squeal of worn springs. His pale blue eyes glimmered in the muted light of the dirty window. It was a cloudy day in London, and in the height of summer, the damp heat had become stifling, but the man didn't appear overheated in his three-piece suit. "It's quite an unusual talent, but not entirely unheard of among our kind."
"I've always known how to do it," answered the boy who sat in the chair by the wooden desk, fingers resting in his lap, calm and composed despite learning about the invitation to an exclusive boarding school hidden in a distant valley in Scotland. "No one taught me. I'm the only wizard here. Sir."
"Ah, I see," said the man, stroking his beard in rumination. "An inborn trait, then. Sometimes hereditary, but always extremely rare."
"Sir," the boy asked, looking up from his hands for the first time, "do you know my family, then? Did they have it too? Was my—my father a wizard like me?"
"I'm sorry, Tom," said the man. "I'm afraid I don't know. Our enchanted registration quill records students' names from birth if they are magical, and if one of their parents has attended Hogwarts. If this doesn't apply, as in the case of Muggleborn children, it records the name and address upon their first outburst of accidental magic. The parents and guardians aren't listed, only the addresses—and in your case, we've put Mrs. Cole down as your caretaker."
The boy's eyes darkened; he looked sullen for a moment, then his brows drew together thoughtfully. "Hermione wrote that magic like I can do isn't taught at Hogwarts. But you know about it—you must have studied it, mustn't you? Or read a book about it?" He leaned forward, his pale face alight with eagerness. "If I was born with this, and there's no way to get rid of it, then I'm stuck with it, aren't I? What if I don't know how to control it? I'd run the chance of accidentally hurting someone when I'm angry—if it's magic, then it can be accidental too, when I'm angry or upset."
The professor nodded. "There's a slight chance, which grows ever slighter once you get your wand and learn to practice controlled magic. Accidental magic outbursts tend to disappear altogether after the age of twelve to thirteen, and tend not to manifest in adults except in situations of great stress or mortal danger."
"There is still a chance, isn't there?" asked Tom. "I—I don't want to risk anyone getting hurt. What if I hurt Hermione?" His eyes grew wide, his lips trembled, and he held his hands out in a display of humble supplication. "The other children think there's something wrong with me because they can feel it when I'm upset. But I couldn't bear it if Hermione left me, if she was afraid of me for something I can't help having. Please, sir, would you consider teaching me more about it?"
Professor Dumbledore searched the boy's pale face, and found his eagerness to learn stronger than the emotional attachment to his friend Hermione.
"You are still young, Tom," said the Professor, turning away from Tom's hungry gaze. "Give yourself a few years before you start looking into subjects beyond the teachings of Hogwarts. But until then, you might improve your control through practising meditative techniques. A well-organised mind, as I call it, has helped me in numerous aspects of life."
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It wasn't so much that she'd told an adult on him, which had occurred more than a few times in his life when some orphanage brats thought they could knock Tom down a peg or two. And it wasn't that some details of his special abilities were revealed to an outsider. He'd done it himself on occasion, whenever fresh meat was introduced to the native fauna of Wool's ecosystem, and Tom had had to "explain" why he, and everything that belonged to him, was not communal property, but sacrosanct.
No, the pain of betrayal came from how the things he'd written to her in his letters made their way off the page. He'd trusted her. They were his words, given from his hand, for her eyes, and she'd gone and—and—
Dear gods, if he was actually, genuinely upset about it, then he was more pathetic than he thought.
This, if anything, was a lesson on what happened when other people were held up to standards that one applied to oneself. And if that self was Tom Riddle, then everyone would be inadequate by default.
Tom was neither kind nor forgiving, so he resolved that Hermione Granger would have to be punished.
And thus, for the first week of term, Tom had ignored her. On the Hogwarts Express, he'd arrived early, found an empty compartment, locked the compartment door, pulled down the blinds, and sat by himself. When he looked out the window and saw her dragging her trunk through the brick gateway of the sixth pillar, he'd ducked his head behind one of his second-hand textbooks, and she ended up spending the journey in a separate carriage.
It was easy to avoid her in class. The subjects that allowed the most inter-house interactions were Flying and Potions (it was surprising how few cauldrons blew up with the way Slughorn spent most of the practical sessions gossiping), but Slytherin took those with the Gryffindors. In fact, the only class Slytherin took with Ravenclaw was Defence Against the Dark Arts and Transfiguration, both of which were overseen by no-nonsense professors who didn't tolerate note passing between desks, let alone the kind of tongue-lashing he could tell Hermione wanted to give him.
Granger was a Ravenclaw.
Her Sorting came as no surprise to Tom. If you tried to look up the definition for Bookworm, you wouldn't have been able to, as the dictionary would have already been taken out for her light bedtime reading.
It meant that she slept in the second highest tower of the castle. Ravenclaw Tower was five floors above the Dungeons, where the Slytherin Dormitories lay. They had very little chance of bumping into each other outside of classes, or even meeting one another in a shared space. The Library and the Great Hall were such spaces, but Tom always checked to make sure he was alone when he studied, and they sat at different tables during meals.
It pleased him to see that no classmates of hers went out of their way to sit next to her at dinner.
Not that other Slytherins liked sitting next to Tom What-Kind-of-Name-is-Riddle-Anyway, but at least they didn't make a public show of avoiding him. They valued the outward appearance of House unity too much, and they couldn't afford to ignore his talent. For instance, when no one volunteered to pass the salt, Tom had used a bit of wandless summoning to get the salt cellar to his side of the table. From that point onward, nobody in his year had attempted to prank him at dinner by dumping a flagon of gravy on his lap.
(They still tried to jinx him in the Common Room, out of public view.)
Granger had tried to catch his eye over the milk jugs and porridge tureens at breakfast, but by then he had started choosing seats where she'd only see his back.
The first week of September passed with cold glances and turned backs and silence.
Midway through the second week, a letter arrived during breakfast, delivered by a generic barn owl. The owl dropped it onto Tom's lap and winged away without stopping for bacon. Tom picked it up. The letter was on a standard student-quality parchment scroll, sealed by a bit of string and an unstamped blob of red wax.
Who would want to write to me? Tom thought. It looks like the sender wants to appear anonymous.
Tom had noticed that many of the older students in Slytherin, and some in other Houses as well, wore some sort of heraldic sigil ring on their fingers. When his dorm mates had written of their Sortings to their parents the evening of the Feast, their pen boxes contained seal stamps similar to the rings, as well as sticks of coloured sealing wax. He'd seen the whole range of colours before, at the stationers' in Diagon Alley. Most people used a nondescript red wax, the cheapest option at a few knuts per stick, but those who preferred more security bought charmed wax in metallic gold and silver that burned thieving hands or destroyed the letter if tampered with.
(Of course, the average wizard relied on a well-trained owl to prevent his letters being intercepted. However, the advantage of anonymity was moot when everyone knew your family owned a black barred eagle owl with luminous amber eyes and a seven-foot wingspan.)
He peeled off the wax and opened the letter, unfurling the message within.
His own handwriting was revealed to him, a clean and precise cursive hand that drew the stem of the f in a smooth, curling loop, and completed each lowercase t with a confident cross-stroke. It was his fountain pen penmanship, honed by years of practice—not the script done for his Hogwarts classes with his drippier quill pen, which had to be dipped in ink every other sentence, and was, to Tom's distaste, quite messy and inferior to the Muggle way of doing it. Until he could get his hands on one of those self-inking, no-drip enchanted quills, at least.
He scanned the page.
His own handwriting, he confirmed—then he recognised his own words—he remembered where they'd come from.
A page from a letter he'd written to Hermione, several months ago. It must have been in late April or May when they'd discussed the failed imperial ambitions of a handful of European warlords.
Several sentences had been copied out in red ink, still in his writing. An excellent duplication or dictation spell with a colour-changing component, then. Clever spellwork, perfectly cast, and beyond the first year textbooks, Tom was forced to admit.
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I, however, am an excellent judge of character... I've always been able to tell when their intentions toward me are dishonest... It was how I confirmed it was worth making your acquaintance, something I do not regret...
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And in her handwriting down the bottom of the page:
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One o'clock, East Courtyard. By the statue of Hipparchus the Stargazer.
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"What's that you have there, Riddle?" asked one of the girls in his year. Antonella Everard, a talentless braggart whose sole claim to notability came from the fact that her great-great-something-or-other had got his portrait placed in the Headmaster's Office. "Ooh, has someone been writing to you?"
"It's nothing," said Tom coolly. "Just a reply from Beringer's in Diagon about the dates for new shipments."
"You can afford to shop at Beringer's?" Everard scoffed, giving his robes a dismissive glance.
His robes were second-hand, but Tom had picked the best out of the pile at the uniform shop when he'd done his school shopping; he'd darned the linings and split seams in his room at Wool's. Once he'd gotten access to the Hogwarts library, he'd applied a handful of minor stain-removing, refreshening, and repair charms. His robes looked all right—he'd made certain of it—and any signs of wear were only visible up close, where repeated washings had faded the once black fabric to a dark grey. He wouldn't have been able to tell unless he put his robes side-by-side to a brand new set.
She was just being spiteful.
"I wasn't planning to," Tom replied, curling his lip in a look of pure derision. "I got the name of their supplier, so now if I want something, I can order directly without having to pay the middleman surcharge. It makes no sense to waste money by being lazy."
He shoved the paper into his trouser pocket and pushed back from the bench. He had History of Magic in ten minutes, and the class was dull enough that no one would notice if his mind were on other things.
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Tom found the East Courtyard deserted. It made sense: at this hour, most people would be in the Great Hall, enjoying a filling lunch of flaky pot pies and ham-and-cheese croissants with chutney and all the butter they wanted. (There was not a dish of margarine in sight, an uncommon instance where Tom was grateful for the antiquated nature of Wizarding culture.)
It was a lunch that Tom wanted too, as he'd come to look forward to regular Hogwarts meals with their dripping roasts and endless baskets of white bread and condiments he'd never seen before. (Who knew you could make jam out of bacon? Wizards, it seemed, had no limits to their power.) He was a little put out from missing a meal because of an annoying witch who had booked him for an appointment he hadn't asked for.
The statue of Hipparchus was of a scholarly-looking man sitting on a marble plinth, legs dangling over the side. He had a head of tightly curled hair with a matching curly beard, and his neck was craned back at an uncomfortable angle, his carved eyes staring at the sky. The small bronze plaque under his sandaled feet proclaimed that the statue was enchanted to move after sunset, whereupon he would turn his head to follow the rise and fall of the moon.
Hermione leaned against Hipparchus' legs, her school satchel clasped against her chest. She bathed in sunlight, frizzy brown hair falling over her closed eyes. This would likely be one of the last few sunny days before a rainy autumn set in and heralded the arrival of their first Scottish winter.
Tom coughed politely and spoke first. "Lunch ends in half an hour."
She ignored him for almost a minute. "Do you know why I chose this place to meet?" she asked, rapping her knuckle on the marble plinth. "This statue in particular?"
"Not really," said Tom, dropping down next to her. "Do elaborate."
"Hipparchus was the mathematician who invented the astrolabe. And apparently he was also a wizard, but I never saw that written in any book. There was an engraving of him on page sixteen of the textbook I gave you—that Professor Dumbledore gave you. Intermediate Geometry. Did you read it?"
"Yes," Tom admitted, through lips pressed into a thin line.
"You never bothered to write back after I wrote you that letter and sent those books along. I wondered how you'd take the news, that we were both magic." Hermione sat up straighter, clutching her satchel closer with white knuckles. Her eyes opened, but she didn't look at him, only stared up at the sky in the same blank, unseeing way as the statue. "How are you, Tom?"
"You shouldn't have told Dumbledore," Tom said, his voice brittle and scathing.
"I wanted to know if you were magical too," Hermione retorted. "I thought it'd be unfair if someone told me that I was a witch all along and no one told you."
"He would have come for me anyway; I was already on the list," snapped Tom, his eyes narrowing in anger. "There was no use in you telling him about our letters."
Hermione turned to face him now, her cheeks flushed red and her eyes glittering with tears. "I didn't tell him about anything you wrote in your letters! Is that what you think this is about? Is that why you stopped writing to me, stopped talking to me, acknowledging that I even exist?"
"Then explain how the first thing Dumbledore said to me was to warn me about it? 'A Hogwarts education does not only comprise the study of magical disciplines, but self-discipline and the ethical use of magic'," Tom recited, the humiliation of his memory raw-edged and bitter.
His first meeting with a real wizard, expectations buoyed up by Hermione's letter days earlier, and he'd been told off in that calm, fatherly way, as if he were a child. Tom had been self-reliant since he was six years old (by that age, he'd learned to wash, dress, and feed himself so the orphanage minders had left him alone to take care of the other brats) and didn't consider himself a child (despite what the laws of Magical and Muggle Britain said) and he certainly didn't consider Dumbledore a father figure.
In that moment he'd been afraid—an unfamiliar sensation within the long-conquered realm of Wool's Orphanage—that his invitation would be rescinded, and his hopes of the better life he knew he deserved dashed for good.
"He knew, Hermione! Explain that!" Tom demanded, fists clenched, the words high and harsh and resonant with magic.
"Firstly," Hermione replied in a low, dangerous tone, "I didn't mention our letters at all. He doesn't know about it. I wouldn't share anything in them anyway, since I write you back and that trust goes both ways. I'm sure that if you wanted, you could find something in all the letters I've written that'd out me as a terrible person.
"And second, the only reason he knew anything at all is because I mentioned something—the incident—that happened the second time we met, before you ever sent me any letters. Don't you remember it? You did something to me—you put words in my head, and I had a headache for the rest of that day. I'd forgotten about it, I'd brushed it off as nothing, because it was years ago, because I'd have laughed at the idea of magic back then. But it was magic, wasn't it, Tom? You were using magic, and you mightn't have known it was magic, but you knew what you were doing." She stopped, bringing her hands to her temples, her wild hair curling around her face where it had pulled out of a silver barrette clip. "You're still doing it, aren't you?"
Tom took a deep breath and reined in his anger, a strange, looming weight lifted off his shoulders, like the atmospheric pressure in the space between the two of them had suddenly disappeared into a vacuum. "I did it because I wanted the truth. And I'm not sorry about it."
Hermione huffed, pressing a hand over her eyes. "You're not going to stop doing it, are you?"
"Well, it worked," Tom said mutinously. "Dumbledore said I was born like this. Before I got a wand, before I knew I was a wizard, this was magic to me. It still is magic, just the same as your being a witch is magic. Neither of us can help what we have. And I already know you wouldn't give up being a witch if someone asked you to, even though we both know handing an eleven-year-old a wand is not much different than giving him a cocked gun. We learned the Knockback Jinx in Defence yesterday and it'd be ridiculously simple to use it on someone standing on a moving staircase."
Hermione shook her head. "I know that, Tom. It scares me, but I know it's true that magic is capable of being dangerous. One of the first things I found out about the magical world was that the wizarding hospital has a section for spell damage. But that's why we're at school, so we can learn how to be careful. Knowing that, I just wish you were more... more responsible."
Tom leaned closer. A curl of his dark hair fell over his forehead, grazing his brows. "I promise not to use it on you," he said, close enough that she could feel his warm breath on her flushed cheek, a mockery of intimacy. "Unless you give consent."
"You should promise not to use it on anyone without permission," said Hermione, sidling backwards. "Or better yet, not use it on anyone at all."
"I might need to one day," Tom retorted. "If someone is trying to hurt me and there's no other choice—you forget that not everyone spends their summers safely tucked away in a nice little house like you have. And in the summer, you know we aren't to use our wands on pain of expulsion. But I'll be careful, I promise; I won't be making a show of it." He peered closer at her, noting her hunched shoulders and lowered eyes. "You're afraid of me, Hermione. I can tell. Am I frightening you?"
"I don't think it'd change anything if I were frightened," said Hermione. She shivered and pulled her robes tighter around her body, but they both knew it wasn't because she was cold. "I think Professor Dumbledore is right. There is a point to learning about the ethics of magic. You might not care about girlish feelings and personal boundaries, but other people will, and you could get in trouble if you slip."
She hesitated for a few moments, clearly debating something in that head of hers, aware that if important information was withheld, Tom would be perfectly capable of finding out on his own. He had as much of a scholar's mind as she.
"While you were ignoring me, I was looking up different branches of magic in the library, based on what I remembered from Professor Dumbledore. And what you did to me," Hermione began in a shaking voice, sagging against the statue's feet. "I tried to find anything related to magical compulsions and... and telepathy, I suppose I could call it. It's a Muggle word, but wizards never seem to complain if it's in Latin or Greek.
"It turns out there is a branch of magic, or a spell of some sort, that replicates the effect of telepathic mind control. And it's highly illegal." Hermione's eyes darted to his. "That's why the Professor warned you: he didn't want you to get arrested before you even took your first exam. I looked up wizarding laws as well—you wouldn't just get your wand snapped, you'd be shipped off to prison. And the wizarding prison, from the references I could find, seem much, much worse than transportation to Australia."
Mind control.
Tom salivated at the notion. It was such a clean way to get things done, something he'd wished he'd been able to do in the lonely days in his early childhood when he was too weak to hit back, too untrained to make them hurt with a thought. As much as he wished he could do it, his abilities only extended to projecting a minor compulsion, and it only worked reliably on animals, young children, and Mrs. Cole when she was soused up to the gills, a rarity that only presented itself on Bonfire Night or Christmas Eve.
Tell the Truth. Go Away. Leave Me Alone.
Always simple commands, not a hint of nuance at all. Still, it wasn't as heavy-handed as making people hurt, which led to some becoming aggressive instead of slinking away as they were supposed to do. And it was far more noticeable if a bunch of people at Wool's had started reporting mysterious aches and pains. Too many complaints would draw the health inspectors, and the last thing Tom wanted was for stories to be told and Tom himself sent to a psychologist.
Tom had thought his compulsion ability similar to the muggle concept of hypnosis, but he'd only read of it in the context of asylum treatments and spirit medium stage shows. The lack of scientific evidence had made him believe it was nothing more than rehearsed quackery.
But this was real magic. More powerful than his own inborn magic, if the magical government had deemed it severe enough to ban it.
"What books did you get this from?" Tom asked, with a quick glance around the courtyard to ensure no one was listening. "I trust your memory, but I'd rather see it for myself."
"There's a set of encyclopaedias of British wizarding law in the library," said Hermione. "Funnily enough, Wizarding Britain still recognises all of Ireland as part of its domain, so apparently they ignore Muggle world politics. Anyway, it's not much to go on—it explains more on sentencing protocol and historical precedent than the magic itself." She sighed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. "There were some references to other texts, but I haven't read them, nor will I. Neither should you. Don't go looking for them."
Tom raised an eyebrow. Don't Do This was not much of a deterrent when he decided something was worth having. "Why not?"
"They're in the Restricted Section. Supplementary reading allowed for Seventh Years, but only if they're on the list for the Defence N.E.W.T. and have a note from a professor." Hermione studied his blank expression. "Tom..."
"I'm not going to wait six years to read a book," said Tom. "I'm not going to break into the Restricted Section tomorrow, Hermione. I'm not stupid. But six years? Absolutely ridiculous." He flashed her a sharp-toothed smile. "I understand if other students need the extra time to grasp the material. But between you and me, I think I can get through the First Year curriculum by Christmas."
"Tom—"
"Hermione, you are free to wait until 1944 to read whatever you like," said Tom in his best saccharine sweet Adoption Day voice. "But don't ask me to share when I have that teacher's note and that book out of the library and I'm reading it, enjoying it—nay, savouring it—right under your nose."
Hermione buried her face in her hands.
Tom laughed and laughed.
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Notes:
— Tom cleaned up his act in 1936. He's not a good boy but the seaside incident does not occur.
— Hermione tells Tom about magic beforehand, so Tom doesn't demand "proof" from Dumbledore during the Hogwarts letter delivery. Dumbledore doesn't set the wardrobe on fire and see the box of stolen toys. He knows Tom is a natural Legilimens and troubled orphan, but does not think Tom is an unredeemable demon child as he does in canon HBP. Tom finds Legilimency more impressive than Parseltongue, because snakes are boring animals and Hermione makes better conversation.