1939

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Tom's first term at Hogwarts flew by in a cascade of perfect O's.

He was used to getting perfect marks and being better than everyone else, so this came as no surprise to him. But for the first time in his life, his peers—he used the word loosely, to refer to people who were his equal in age and nothing else—respected him for his magic and intellect. They admired him, unlike the children of Wool's whose respect was founded on fear, and tainted by an intrinsic distrust of anyone who spoke the King's English and remembered to wash their hands every time they used the loo.

He learned that even though the other students had magic just like he did, and access to the same teachers and schoolbooks and lessons, to him the theory was intuitive, and the spells came easily. He was a wizard, but he was still Special.

He never used that word, Special, in public. Just as he never used the word Hermione or Friend in the same sentence at the House tables, in the classroom, in the corridors, or anywhere outside the closed drapes of his dormitory four-poster. To the public persona he presented of Tom Riddle the Humble Orphan, and to the rest of the First Year cohort, she was Granger the Topiary Wonder and resident Ravenclaw swot, a fellow classmate, class rival, but nothing more than that.

But in private—

Behind the closed doors of abandoned classrooms, hidden in a warren of corridors in the Hogwarts dungeons, Tom saw Hermione beyond what everyone else saw, those who were blinded by the mound of fluffy hair with too much tooth and the perpetually waving hand.

"Did you check the trap on the second floor?" Tom asked, opening his book satchel and sliding out a small shortbread tin with holes punched through the lid. He pulled the lid off and tipped out the tin's contents.

One scrawny brown rat with whiskers missing on the left side, motionless and stiff after being struck by a double helping of Petrificus Totalus.

Hermione had her own box out of her bookbag, a pasteboard jellybean box wrapped in a shiny layer of Spellotape. Inside was another brown rat, in better condition than Tom's, also bound with a Petrificus.

"I got one," Hermione said, kneeling down on the flagstoned floor of the empty classroom, the ends of her robes dragging on a thick grey layer of dust and old powdered chalk. Her wand lay in her lap. "Mr. Pringle almost caught me when I went to check. He started to notice that I kept loitering around the broom cupboard by the Charms corridor." She looked down at the rat, which appeared dead; the spell restricted movement, but permitted shallow breathing. Her cheeks were ever so slightly pink. "I think he thought I was keeping watch for older students. They say that specific cupboard is often used for—for—"

"Indecent proposals?" Tom remarked, setting out his parchment, quills, and wand, his expression unperturbed. "You don't have to dither about it; I already know where babies come from. I also know where babies go when a gentleman decides he prefers the indecent but not the proposal. I'm told my father was one of them."

Hermione flushed darker. "Oh, I'm sorry, Tom—"

"It's alright," said Tom, shrugging. "He may have been a cad, but if he gave me my magic, then I suppose he's exonerated. I'd rather be a wizard than not have existed at all."

"Perhaps if he had magic," Hermione put forward hesitantly, "he had your talent, too. Professor Dumbledore did tell you it was sometimes hereditary. Maybe that's how he... um, won over your mother."

"Maybe," said Tom, his eyes darkening in silent outrage. "But what a pathetic waste of talent. A rare skill in the hands of an adult wizard could have him hobnobbing with the cream of London, but instead of doing anything useful, he went off chasing skirts downmarket." He shook his head, the darkness clearing away from his expression, although his shoulders remained stiff and his spine rigid. "I don't want to talk about him anymore. For all I know, he's long dead. I've never met him, and if I ever do, I want to be better at magic than he is. Let's get back to work."

"Alright," Hermione agreed, not wanting to spend any more time discussing Tom's parentage, or rather, his lack of one. "Finite!"

In many aspects, Hermione was refreshingly blunt, especially when the topic involved subjects she viewed from an academic perspective. However, drawing reference to her comfortable standard of living and her well-to-do family, and now, apparently, broom cupboards, made her timid and self-conscious. Tom found her sudden bashfulness amusing, but not surprising—Hermione was several months his senior, and was older than almost everyone in their year.

(He'd long resolved that when his time came to undergo that mysterious phase of adolescence, or as he put it, pupate, he would never be as awkward as that. If there was any way one could go through that process gracefully, then Tom assured himself he would find it. He'd never got chicken pox, after all, and he'd been told that all children had it at one point in their lives. Specialness had to count for something.)

"Finite!"

The frozen rats shivered and twitched, their pink, hairless tails thrashing over the dusty stone floor.

"Hello, there," said Hermione, watching her rat crawl around on the floor for a minute or two, before it began heading for her bag. She reached inside and pulled out a bread roll wrapped in a handkerchief. "Our control rat is good to go."

Tom nudged his own rat with the tip of his yew wand. "Mine is a bit slow. I double-spelled it just in case it wore off in my bag. It seems to have worked."

When the rats had woken up, he and Hermione set the empty classroom up as an obstacle course.

They set the bread on the empty lectern, or hid it in a drawer of the teacher's desk, or in the musty storage cupboard in the back of the classroom. Hermione and Tom lowered the rats they had been levitating, and let them sniff around the food.

Hermione's rat, which Tom had named "One", but Hermione had re-named "Sienna", relied on its nose to scent out the hidden bread. Tom's rat, which he called "Two", but now went by the name "Peanut", hesitated at Tom's feet.

For most of his life, Tom had been good with animals. Tom's definition of "good" meant that he could ensure small animals remained quiet, docile, and defecated only in places he approved of, rather than the romanticised Man's Best Friend angle that everyone else seemed to adore. Mice never nested in the back of his wardrobe and left stains on his socks. Mrs. Thornton's one-eyed moggy left him alone when he stole plums from over the fence.

Billy's prized pet rabbit came to his hand quietly when he called for it, its little heart thumping in its chest beneath the layer of velvet-soft fur and delicate ribcage. And quietly it went back to its nest of torn linens and ragged tea towels under Billy's bed, with not a peep until it passed, whereupon Billy filled the glazed brick halls of Wool's with his cries.

(Tom still reminisced about that day. No one knew he'd done it; it was considered one of the Great Mysteries of Wool's, like the Disappearance of Jamie Fitzroy, one of the original orphans who was presumed to have died in 1897, and the Strange Racket in the Attic. Tom would have liked to claim credit, but in the end, he'd spread the rumour that Billy had done it himself, and after that, none of the girls would sit next to him at supper or talk to him at school.

It was worth it not to have taken credit in the end—Tom had found it pretty hilarious to see Billy Stubbs be treated as the orphanage outcast, not to mention Mrs. Cole giving him the evil eye for an entire fortnight.)

Tom stared down at the rat.

Rats didn't think the same way as humans. How could they? They were vermin, short-lived and instinctual, even the ones exposed to magic for generations—a result of being raised by wizards as pets or potion ingredients, or from living in wizarding homes. They were simple-minded creatures, driven by simple things. Hunger and thirst, mates and territory, danger and survival.

As good as Tom was with animals, he didn't make it a habit to keep them as pets. They were unclean, the orphanage didn't approve of keeping animals, and most important of all, making them do as he wanted required him to think as they thought, for all the thinking they were capable of. It wasn't as if they could speak English or understand verbal orders. A dog might, and maybe a monkey or a parrot or a wizard-raised mail owl, but they only had access to rats.

That was because Hermione had put her foot down at Tom's suggestion of "borrowing" cats from their classmates. Pet cats were allowed to wander the Common Rooms of all houses, leaving hair on the sofas. The male cats wiped their... secretions on the furniture and on dormitory beds if anyone forgot to close their doors at night or when they left for classes. (Lestrange had done that the other week, and Tom punished him by covering his pillow with cat hair and furballs. No one knew who did it, but after that incident, everyone in the dorm learned not to leave the door open.)

Tom hadn't thought using cats would be much of a loss; Hermione had very loudly disagreed.

Empathy for human beings was a demanding task to Tom. Empathy for animals... well, strenuous was a very mild way to describe it.

But hardship wasn't something that could intimidate Tom.

Hunger and thirst, he could remember those from his earlier days at Wool's, when he'd been sent to his room without dinner for his cheek. Back then, he didn't care about speaking unless spoken to, and he had wanted to prove he was cleverer than this minders. He'd made comment on Miss Gloria Caruther's beau and his wandering hands tangled on Thelma Roscoe's apron strings, by the tradesman's gate last Tuesday—

Urgency, he could remember too, along with darkness. The boiler room in the basement, a place that little boys dared each other to explore during rainy Saturday afternoons. It had contained a dirty cast-iron box boiler, coal-fired and coated in a fine, clinging dust that stained his hands and clothes black and fell into his eyes when he banged on the door—

The rat shuddered, and its beady eyes met Tom's. Its whiskers quivered, then drooped, and the light in its eyes glazed over.

The rat jinked left and right, wobbling along in a drunken zigzag, as if it couldn't decide which direction to go. As if two conflicting instincts were competing within its simple little mind. Tom clenched his teeth, a headache forming behind the sockets of his eyeballs, his eyelids twitching in concentration.

The rat went for the teacher's desk. The second drawer from the top, on the right side. It didn't have the strength to pull open the handle, so it gripped the top surface of the desk with its forepaws, and used its back legs to wedge its toes into the opening. Once it had pushed the drawer open past a crack, it dove in headfirst, and both he and Hermione could hear the scratching sounds from within.

"Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds! Good job, Peanut!" announced Hermione, glancing down at a Muggle stopwatch in her left hand, then across to Tom who had dropped into one of the student benches that littered the empty classroom. "And you too, Tom."

Tom grunted in response.

Empathy was exhausting. Why on Earth would people want to feel it all the time?

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By the time the Christmas holidays had rolled around, Tom had Peanut fairly well-trained.

Or, to be more accurate, Peanut Three.

Peanut One and Two had both died during a series of rather violent seizures, and Hermione speculated that they'd suffered an aneurysm, after Tom had overloaded their danger reflex response. Hermione had been upset at him, but she wasn't one to talk. She'd already lost her first Sienna, who had gnawed out of its box while they were in class, and couldn't be found anywhere in Ravenclaw Tower. After she'd cried a bit, Tom had reminded her that it would have died anyway, as Mr. Pringle the caretaker hadn't set his rat traps to collect furry little pets.

The loss of the Peanuts hadn't left Tom unscathed. After the death of Peanut One, he'd had a massive headache that lasted for three days, and after that he took a much lighter hand to training. No more trying to override their simple instincts by pure magic and force of will—he got better results and stopped losing his time investments after he tried a basic training regimen that rewarded obedience with food and positive mental stimulus.

It was an almost Muggle way of doing it, to his annoyance.

When Hermione returned to London for the Christmas holidays, Tom remained at Hogwarts with Peanut.

Christmas at Hogwarts was the highlight of his school experience, by far. He had no classes, so he could spend all day in the library without having to fight with older students for the best studying nooks. The dormitory was empty apart from him, so he could study in bed past midnight without hearing one of his dorm mates complain about trying to sleep with the lights on. The dinner tables produced all sorts of seasonal treats that he hadn't seen before—iced gingerbread houses, creamy spiced eggnog, and pineapple jelly with vanilla ice cream. That wasn't even counting the glory that was the Christmas Feast, during which Tom had felt like an emperor at a banquet. The tables had been laden with two dozen roasted fowl: goose, duck, pheasant, turkey, stuffed and dressed in their own feathers. The small number of students and staff who'd stayed hadn't even eaten half of them.

Tom thought it was very excessive and disgustingly wasteful, but if wizards could multiply food, then perhaps grand banquets were more of a show of magical prowess than a tasteless boast of financial superiority as Muggle dinner party hosts would have done. As Hogwarts was the centre of magical learning in Britain, it was only fair that they put on a good show.

After Christmas, Tom and Peanut explored the deserted corridors of the castle, looking for secret rooms and hidden passages. Tom held Peanut in his gloved hand as he paced down each side of the corridors, and Peanut would squeak when detecting mysterious draughts or strange smells. So far, they'd found three alcoves hidden behind tapestries, a number of abandoned classrooms, an empty storage cupboard, a room full of floral-scented soap in great vats, and a secret shortcut that connected the Fourth Floor to the Great Hall without having to cross half a dozen moving staircases.

Before she'd left for the train, Hermione had given Tom the gloves, along with a woollen hat and scarf set in Slytherin colours as a Christmas present. They were traditional gifts given by parents in the days and weeks after Sorting, which Tom and Hermione had found out when all their yearmates had received them via owl post. Tom's dorm mates had had their green-and-silver scarves the evening of their Sorting, as most of them had already known they'd end up in Slytherin. Even though no one needed a scarf on the second day of September, they still made a show of flaunting them in front of him in the first few days, as proof of their House pride and family tradition, both of which Riddle the No-Name Orphan clearly lacked.

(Tom had written a Third Year student's History of Magic essay with his handy Dictation Quill in exchange for sneaking out several vials of Shrinking Solution from their Potions lesson. He'd then shrunk Lestrange's and Rosier's scarves over the following weeks, so when the weather was finally cold enough to use them, they'd lost a good three feet in length, and couldn't be fixed with a simple Finite. The Common Room had a good laugh at that; even the Prefects thought it was a clever trick.)

Tom was bundled up in his toasty new scarf when he turned a corner on the Fourth Floor and encountered Professor Dumbledore, not far from the entrance to the Hospital Wing.

"Good afternoon, Tom," said Dumbledore amiably, his hands in the pockets of a fluffy orange robe, embroidered with metallic copper thread in the shapes of oak branches, leaves, and acorns.

"Good afternoon, Professor," Tom replied, stuffing Peanut into the pocket of his own robe.

"I do not believe rats are on Hogwarts' list of approved pets," Dumbledore remarked with a gentle smile. His eyes, however, were not as kind and gentle. They were astute, and they were fixed on Tom's pocket.

"Well, sir," said Tom, returning Dumbledore's smile with one of his own, "the Hogwarts Student Relief Fund didn't have enough to afford an owl or a cat as a pet, and if it did, I don't think I'd have wasted it on a toad. It's quiet in the castle during the holidays, and I suppose I have to enjoy company where I can find it. Beggars can't be choosers, and all that."

"Ah, indeed," said Dumbledore, his eyes lighting up with a genuine sort of fondness. "Well said, Tom. Would you like to join me for tea?"

"I'd actually planned to get some homework done," Tom said, even though he'd finished all his essays by the second day of break.

"I'll write you a note giving you an exemption from the pet approval list," Dumbledore offered.

"I was going to ask Professor Slughorn when he comes back after holidays," Tom said. Then he added, "He is my Head of House, sir."

"And I am the Deputy Headmaster," said Dumbledore. "It's best to take care of these things as soon as possible, while they are fresh on our minds."

How could this man seem so genial while pulling a power play over a twelve year old? Did he even realise he was pulling rank over a child, or did he act in this infuriatingly patronising way with everyone? Was his entire modus operandi based on being underestimated, a powerful genius hidden under the guise of a harmless eccentric? Be a respected Professor, while on the other hand act as a friend to all students and a kind ear to be trusted with their juiciest secrets?

It was a clever strategy, much like Tom's Good Boy persona, but every time Tom held open a door for a gossiping harpy, allowed someone to ruffle his hair, or handed away the last slice of chocolate cake on the dessert platter, something inside him died.

"Of course, sir," Tom said, and he would have ground his teeth if Dumbledore wasn't standing right in front of him. "To your office, then?"

"Yes, to the First Floor we go," said Dumbledore, leading the way down the moving staircases, Tom jogging along to keep up with his long strides. "Quite a distance to travel, but I've always noticed that the castle provides an alternative path when one is in desperate need of it. A few years ago, my N.E.W.T. students were practising with self-transfiguration, and one young lady, in the process of transforming herself into an osprey, went with the inchmeal visualisation method. It's a thorough method, and allows one to copy the finest details of the original object, but it's very slow, especially for beginners, and the girl began her transformation from the bottom up.

"She was so slow with her self-transfiguration that her fully transformed osprey legs couldn't support the weight of her human torso. And so she ended up shattering the bones in her legs, and we had to rush her up to the Hospital Wing so the Mediwitch could heal her before we changed her back. It wasn't worth it to reverse the transfiguration and risk leaving bird bone fragments embedded in her flesh—they're hollow, and much harder to detect than solid human bones, you see. But luckily we had her sent to the Hospital Wing in time, thanks to the magic of the castle."

What a morbid tale to tell a First Year, thought Tom. It wasn't as if he hadn't heard cautionary tales before; every British child learned what happened to the little boys who cried wolf, sucked their thumbs, and ran with scissors before they were old enough to walk. It was just, well, rather alarming how blasé wizards were when it came to serious bodily mutilation. Especially mutilation that occurred in a student under the eyes of their professor.

Tom knew he was a wizard, not a Muggle, and on an intellectual level understood that most injuries could be healed with the right combination of spells and potions. But somehow he couldn't help but acknowledge that Hermione had a point, magic could be dangerous in the hands of the inexperienced and untrained.

Or, Tom thought to himself, to those whose visualisation was unfocused and whose willpower was weak.

"Professor, why didn't she turn herself into an osprey in one go?" asked Tom. "If she had enough skill and focus to copy fine details, then she could have expanded her focus on changing her whole body, with less emphasis on exact detail. It's the same technique on different scales, isn't it? The same way levitating a feather is not much different from levitating a desk. Then she would have avoided breaking her own legs."

"The technique for partial self-transfiguration is slightly different from a full transfiguration," explained Dumbledore. "Animal self-transfigurations alter the thinking process of the caster, so many inexperienced wizards lose concentration right before completing the spell, when their transformation begins to affect their mental faculties. An experienced wizard may perform multiple, rapid partial transfigurations to replicate the effect of a full self-transfiguration, which in most cases is considered a safer alternative, even if the multi-stage approach is not quite as efficient. It is rare for a wizard or witch to have the broad and comprehensive mental focus to perform a full-body self-tranfiguration in one go; the ones that can do it often become Animagi, which grants the benefit of an animal body, while retaining the human's mental acuity."

By this time, they'd reached the Transfiguration teacher's office. Dumbledore drew his hands out of his pockets and tapped the doorknob with one long finger, and Tom heard a click of tumblers sliding within the locking mechanism. Inwardly, he marvelled at Dumbledore's use of non-verbal, wandless magic. This was a door protected from a textbook Alohomora. In fact, it looked more like an enchantment found in the locks of premium expanding trunks.

Dumbledore's office was circular in shape, situated at the base of one of Hogwarts' many towers. Shelves lined the walls, containing row after row of intricate magical gadgets: spinning tops, armillary spheres, animated globes, chronometers, metronomes, and barometers. The bookcase behind Dumbledore's desk contained a collection of ancient-looking tomes with weathered spines in a wide assortment of exotic leathers, and even a few scrolls and clay tablets.

A tall, diamond-paned window at the back of the room overlooked a snowy courtyard, and by the window was a golden stand upon which rested a large bird with red feathers that faded to a warm, buttery gold in its long tail and crest. The bird was asleep, its head buried in its chest.

A phoenix, one of the rarer magical species, Tom observed. I wonder if it means something that Dumbledore has a phoenix and my wand contains a core of phoenix feather. Do we have shared magical affinities? Are we to be equals in power some day? There are few magical creatures as powerful as phoenixes, although their magic tends to be concentrated toward their abilities in healing and longevity.

"Please, have a seat, Tom," said Dumbledore, settling himself behind his desk. He gestured to a well-worn armchair arranged in front of the desk, upholstered in a soft blue velvet patterned with moving clouds. "How do you take your tea?"

Tom sat down, adjusting his robes so he didn't squash Peanut. "With lemon if I'm being served the good stuff. If I'm not, then with milk and sugar. I've never been partial to the aftertaste of fermented dirt."

"You are young to have such discriminating tastes," Dumbledore remarked. He drew his wand out of his sleeve and tapped it against the table. A silver tray appeared on his desk, containing a tea service of Hogwarts' standard set of bone china, white with gold rims and the school crest in relief on the sides of the cups, sugar bowl, tea pot, and milk jug. With a wave of his wand, the tea pot leaped up and began pouring over a levitating tea strainer.

Tom noticed that he hadn't spoken an incantation, nor had he used the standard "swish and flick" motion taught in Charms class. It was proof that one didn't need words and wand-waving—or even wands—to perform magic. Of course, he had known this before he'd come to Hogwarts, but he'd thought it was an ability limited to those who were Special, and of those, Tom was the Most Special. For all that he disliked admitting it, even in the privacy of his own thoughts, perhaps Dumbledore had a smidgen of Specialness in him as well.

Only for some reason, he hid his Specialness, as if he enjoyed being one starling in a flock of a thousand others. Tom couldn't imagine why.

"I don't see any use in pretending I like the taste of boiled dirt," said Tom. "It only serves to encourage people who buy cheap tea to keep buying it. And well, sir, I can't say I like the idea of reinforcing negative behaviours." He accepted the cup of tea that floated to his side of the desk, closely followed by a hovering saucer of lemon slices. "I found a book in the library on the care and handling of nifflers, and it seemed like solid, practical advice."

"But you forget, Tom, that nifflers are not people," said Dumbledore, as he dumped spoonful after spoonful of sugar into his teacup. "Practices for one kind do not necessarily transfer to others."

"Are they, sir?" Tom asked. "I read that the Ministry of Magic defines centaurs as 'not people'. They even have a Beast Control department assigned to take care of them. I haven't taken Care of Magical Creatures yet, but it seems somewhat presumptuous to decide who counts as a person, and who doesn't. But then again, I'm only an outsider who learned about the magical world a few months ago, so what do I know?"

It was easy for him to slip in the rôle of the wide-eyed, open-minded young schoolboy, a humble scholar so very eager to siphon wisdom from the mouth of the master. Professor Slughorn, out of all his professors, loved his performances the most, although the man had no idea that it was just that, a performance. Hermione, who debated him in words and letters, called this side of him her Devil's Advocate.

Dumbledore's piercing eyes looked at him from over the rim of his teacup. "You're a clever boy, Tom. I'm sure you can discern for yourself what makes a person a person and what doesn't."

Well, there it was. Dumbledore was quite patently not like Professor Slughorn. Sluggy was a weak-willed pushover, for all his talent in potioneering and networking. But Dumbledore only pretended to be weak and useless, and certainly wouldn't consent to being addressed as "Dumbles".

At least, not by someone like Tom.

Tom found that he couldn't decide whether or not he should respect Dumbledore for having a backbone.

"I'm a supporter of self-determination, sir," Tom replied, keeping the muscles of his face from twitching, from showing any hint of dishonesty. Hermione relied on raw fact to win her arguments. Tom had always had a way to put his opinions in the best light, to make his side of an argument sound so reasonable that people forgot they were only his opinions. "It's up to the individual to decide what they want to be—what name they want others to call them. But if someone willingly allows themselves to be led into doing things, whether it's buying or boycotting cheap tea... Well, as they say, actions speak louder than words."

"Indeed they do," Dumbledore said placidly, setting his cup down and leaning back in his armchair. "It is our choices that define who we are, more than words or ability, inborn or otherwise." He folded his hands across his stomach. "How has school been for you, Tom?"

"Good," said Tom. "Sir, you're my professor. Shouldn't you know my academic standings from marking our term exams?"

"Beyond exams and marks, how are you settling into Hogwarts?"

"Well enough," said Tom. "I like the castle and I like learning about magic. I like it more than the orphanage, though that's not hard to beat. Living in the Hogwarts broomstick shed would be superior to being locked up with a bunch of Muggles for three months." On impulse, Tom decided to ask something he'd been contemplating from the first week of September. "Sir, I don't suppose I could stay at Hogwarts during the summer? It's just that I'd rather not stay at the orphanage if it could be helped."

Dumbledore shook his head gravely. "I'm sorry, but it wouldn't be possible. The staff return to their own homes during the summer, and the only adult member of staff who stays year-round is the caretaker. It's not nearly enough supervision. There is, after all, a good reason behind Hogwarts' prefect system."

"I suppose it was too much to hope for," Tom said dispassionately, but on the inside, he'd felt like Dumbledore had just slapped him across the face. It was a rare day that Tom experienced the sting of barefaced rejection. Tom could argue, cajole, flatter, or threaten to get himself placed in most people's good graces, but it would never work with Dumbledore. Dumbledore was too perceptive. Too principled. Like Hermione, but she was twelve years old and the only person she knew who was as persuasive as Tom... was Tom. Tom guessed that Dumbledore had met other people over the decades who could do what Tom did, and it had made him resistant to things like clever words and superficial charm. Hermione was starting to develop that same resistance, much to his annoyance.

"It's very strange, sir," spoke Tom in a soft, conversational tone, "that the Ministry of Magic would fund school and board for each student, and the Hogwarts Relief Fund pays for robes and books, but no one cares for the student himself. In a way, it reminds me of the orphanage. There's the same kind of... disengaged philanthropy, shall I call it, where a well-meaning individual can donate money, yet he will never learn the names of the orphans who benefit, nor will he grant a disadvantaged child the blessing of a family.

"In this regard, Professor, I can see that despite calling ourselves Wizard and calling them Muggle, and drawing lines between our world and theirs, there's not much different between us, is there? In the end, we're all rather alike, aren't we?"

"You are correct, Tom," Dumbledore agreed. His eyes closed and then opened again, as if he was repressing a memory of great agony. But it passed, and his eyes cleared, returning to the normal shade of blue that pierced through the many constructed layers of Tom's identity. "We were all born human, imperfect; we suffer as much as we profit from the volatility of our human natures. I cannot change it, and I cannot change the specifics of your situation, for all that I wish I could. Unfortunately, there are responsibilities outside Britain that require my presence this summer, and I fear, the coming summers as well."

Tom would have made a comment on Dumbledore's recent lecture on the importance of choices over lip service, but he bit his tongue. The overarching moral was one of wisdom and making wise choices, and Tom was self-aware enough to recognise that it wouldn't be a wise choice to mouth off to his professor.

It is our choices that define who we are, thought Tom. Not only to ourselves, but also to other people.

"I wish you luck on your travels," said Tom, in as bland a voice as he could muster. "If that's all you wanted to discuss, do you suppose you could write me that note of authorisation for my pet?"

"Of course, of course. Before I forget!" Dumbledore reached into his desk and took out a sheet of parchment, printed with the Hogwarts crest on the top centre. He began to write out the note in violet ink, excusing Tom for breaking the rules on approved pets. Tom noticed that he wrote in a very clean hand, obviously well-practised with a quill, although he had a few idiosyncratic touches in the form of drawing out his capital letters with long, flamboyant curlicues.

He also had multiple middle names, which he took obvious pleasure in writing out, as slowly as he could.

Tom wanted to snatch the paper out of his hands.

Dumbledore set the quill back in his ink pot, glancing up from the parchment, which he'd rolled up into a scroll and sealed with a daub of wax. "Here you are, Tom. And another matter before I forget—I trust that you have been keeping up with your meditation practice?"

"I try, sir," Tom said, tucking the scroll up his sleeve. "But the only place I can do it is in my dormitory, and it gets noisy sometimes what with my dorm mates snoring all night."

"Have you tried a Silencing Charm? The incantation is 'Silencio.'"

"I have, sir. But it only lasts for a quarter of an hour at most before it wears off."

"You should focus your spell on the drapes next time, rather than straight up in the air or in the direction of your classmates," said Dumbledore. "Close your curtains, and conclude the wand motion with the final downwards flick while touching the tip of your wand to the curtain. Cast the spell with the visualisation of the curtains being a solid, discrete barrier that sound cannot pass through. Focus more on defining the shape and boundaries of the spell rather than the effect you want to achieve—although you mustn't disregard it. Cast correctly, you should get at least an hour before it wears off. Or even longer, once you get better at holding a twofold visualisation."

"Thank you, sir," said Tom. "May I ask how that works?"

Dumbledore gave him a serene smile. "It is an advanced topic that you will learn once you take the Magical Theory class in your N.E.W.T. years. Suffice it to say, it is the difference between using my wand to cast Lumos, and turning on my lamp." He raised his finger and tapped the red glass shade of his desk lamp, which began to shed a soft golden light across the surface of his desk.

"Oh," Tom breathed. "It has to do with enchantments. Interesting. Well, I shan't occupy any more of your time, Professor. May I be excused?"

"You may," said Dumbledore. "Don't hesitate to drop in for tea another day, Tom. If there is anything I like as much as I do warm woollen socks, it's tea and excellent conversation."

"I can't make any promises, sir," Tom demurred. "But I suppose I can try."

Tom left Dumbledore's office with a profound sense of relief. He had a sneaking suspicion that it was the same kind of relief ladies felt when they removed their girdles after a long day. Not that he knew what that felt like, of course, but he could commiserate with the sensation of being squeezed into, confined, into a shape he did not naturally resemble, for no other reason but to conform to expectations set by Society and the annoyingly persistent Professor Dumbledore.

He was exhausted. It was the longest serious conversation he could recall having in the last few years with anyone besides Hermione.

How did other people do it? He didn't understand how his fellow Slytherins spent the hours from dinner till curfew lazing about in the Common Room, playing cards and Gobstones and defending their favourite Quidditch teams. How people looked forward to being invited to Slughorn's dinner parties, where they had to listen to an obese old fogey ramble about his holiday spent in a chalet owned by another obese fogey. They said Slughorn served wine and whiskey to the Sixth and Seventh Years, but to Tom, enduring the Professor's presence for the sake of the drinks was nothing more than exchanging one unpleasant vice for another.

(It was like sitting through the sermon just to drink the Communion wine, a very Muggle analogy that Tom would be embarrassed to have thought of, if it hadn't been so apt.)

He walked back to the Slytherin dorms and flopped onto his bed, letting Peanut out of his pocket. After staring at the top of the canopy for a good ten minutes, Tom whipped his wand out of his sleeve and pointed it at the drapes.

Incantation, the spoken component. Silencio. It wasn't strictly necessary, but Tom hadn't got up to the level of nonverbal casting yet. Privately, he thought that while an expert could cast a spell without a word, a true master could cast a Stunner by shouting "Urgleburgle!"

Visualisation, the mental component. Shaping his magic into the form he wanted it to take in the physical realm. The pinnacle of this skill was advanced Transfiguration and Conjuration, the art of creating something out of nothing. Or to be more precise, matter out of energy.

Gesticulation, the physical component. Directing the magic and anchoring it to a subject using his wand as a focus. The permanence and stability of the spell were determined by how well he combined intent, effect, and subject. Magical Portraits and the Slytherin Common Room entrance barrier were examples of near-perfect implementation, the magic in them functioning even after hundreds of years.

"Silencio!"

The Silencing Charm was a minimum Fourth Year spell, and tested in the Charms O.W.L. It took him six tries before he got the hang of combining the different spell elements as described by Dumbledore.

It seemed the old man was good for something, at least.

By the time Tom had to head back out for dinner, he had marshalled his thoughts with the help of some peaceful meditation. He still didn't like Professor Busybody—and was unsure if he ever would; it was as alien a notion as being friends with Mrs. Cole. However, on the scale of Useful to Worthless, Dumbledore had proven to have some value. (Dumbledore's pet phoenix was also valuable. Everything from its tears to its feathers to the ashes of its rebirth was worth tens of galleons in the potions market.)

It was to Tom's convenience that he didn't have to spend the entirety of dinner avoiding eye contact with Dumbledore, a harder task than usual during the holidays, as the remaining staff and students dined at a single table instead of being separated by a High Table and the four House tables.

An owl had swooped down and laid a heavy wrapped box by Tom's plate. Owl delivery wasn't common outside the breakfast rush, but this was a special occasion.

.

.

Dear Tom,

Happy twelfth birthday!

It was surprising how quickly I began to miss Hogwarts once I'd gotten off the train. I can't count how many times I reached for my wand and remembered I wasn't allowed to use magic outside school. Reading in bed with an electric light feels so strange now.

Seeing Mum and Dad again is wonderful, of course, but somehow, the house feels empty. I think I've gotten too used to sharing my dormitory with six other girls, and sitting for each meal at a table shared with a hundred other people in my House. It's like I'm missing something important, but I know what you'd say—most things in London can't compare to Hogwarts. Our Christmas cards lack moving illustrations, our tinsel doesn't glitter like it does on the charmed trees in the Great Hall, and it's hard not to ignore the absence of snow that you're probably getting by the bucket up in Scotland...