1941
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Tom had the misfortune of being invited to the Deputy Headmaster's office for tea, not long after Christmas. It appeared that he had made the mistake, once again, of drawing Professor Dumbledore's eye.
The invitation was delivered by a school owl at breakfast, so early in the morning that many of the other students who'd stayed for the holiday hadn't even woken up. Why should they? It wasn't as if they had classes to go to, so most of them preferred to sleep in until noon. Winter in Scotland meant that following a school day routine would have them getting out of bed before the sun rose, and few of them were motivated enough to do that.
Tom was motivated. The library opened at eight o'clock. Wasting time with sleep was throwing away his education.
That motivation, however, began to fade at noon, and was gone completely by three in the afternoon.
His feet had dragged across the stones of the castle and down the stairs to the First Floor where Dumbledore's office sat at the base of its own tower. Tom's arm, as if laden with a great weight, hesitated at the heavy, iron-bound oak door when he raised his hand to knock.
The bells in the clocktower chimed the hour.
One, two, three.
The echo of the last peal faded away into the howling winds of a Scottish winter.
He knocked.
The locking mechanism clicked. The door swung open.
Dumbledore was inside the office, sitting behind the desk, his fingers laced together and thumbs twiddling to suggest that he had been waiting for a while, but didn't mind it in the least because he was having a jolly time twiddling away by himself. He wore robes in a rich aubergine purple; the inner lining of his wide, trumpet-shaped sleeves was in watered silk the colour of antique gold, which caught the light with every movement of his hands.
The lamps in the room were lit, casting a warm golden light over the desk, and the office was arranged as it had been the last time Tom had seen it: the phoenix on its golden stand preening its feathers, the snowy scene behind the high, arched windows, the bookcases and magical instruments, and the squashy armchair in front of the desk, upholstered in red leather with gilded wooden lions' paws for legs.
There was a tray on the desk containing a full tea service and tiered cake stand. The teapot was steaming.
"Good afternoon, Tom. Please, have a seat," said Dumbledore. The interlaced fingers unlaced, and one hand gestured grandly to the chair in front of the desk.
Tom sat, adjusting his robes so they wouldn't wrinkle.
"Professor," Tom began, his lips parted, his eyes wide and guileless, in that innocent expression that Hermione called his 'Wheedling Face'. It worked well on adults, and he'd used it during the summer to stay up another quarter hour past his official bed time. At Hogwarts, it allowed him to borrow one or two extra books past his ten-book limit at the library.
"Is this about what happened in the Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson? Professor Merrythought cleared it up right away, and said I was excused for it. Emotions running wild, in the heat of the moment." Tom looked down at his hands, abashed. Then he glanced up through his eyelashes at the disappointingly indifferent Dumbledore on the other side of the table. "It was just a bit more literal in my case, you see, sir."
"As a matter of fact, Tom, that is what I wished to discuss," said Dumbledore. He reached over the desk and slid the tea tray closer to himself. "But first, let's start with something more important. Tea!"
Dumbledore picked up an upside-down teacup and turned it the right way around with one hand; he held the other hand over the tray, his fingers wriggling like flobberworms in a bucket, and the cup and saucer closest to Tom lifted up and floated over to him. The spoons clinked, the teapot poured, and the dish of lemon slices made its way to Tom's hand, the silver serving tongs opening and closing like the jaws of a tiny crocodile.
A basic, single-function animation charm, thought Tom, watching the proceedings with an assessing eye. Now that he knew more about magic than he had back in First Year, he was more critical about other people's spellcasting. A minor one that most witches and wizards past their O.W.L.s can perform, and most that have passed their N.E.W.T.s could do wordlessly. I've seen it done in half the shops of Diagon Alley. But he did it wandlessly.
And Hermione calls me a braggart.
Tom served himself lemon. When he set the tongs back onto the dish, it lifted up and returned to the tea tray. Dumbledore picked a few biscuits off the cake tray and placed them on the side of his saucer, next to his cup.
"Lemon shortbread, Tom? No? They are excellent, if I do say so," Dumbledore said, munching on a biscuit. "To return to the topic of discussion, I'd like to hear your perspective on the incident during the lesson. I've heard from Galatea, of course, who says it was an overenthusiastic reaction from a student who's always been keen on the wandwork, but in all my years of teaching, I don't think anyone has reacted quite like you."
"What would you like to know in particular, Professor?" asked Tom. He considered drinking his tea, but thought it might look like he was trying to buy time to fabricate a story. Better to keep his hands in his lap. "The lesson was... distressing. I don't think I was the only one who thought that. Plenty of students went to the Hospital Wing afterwards for Calming Draughts."
"I want to know how you set the classroom on fire. Where did you learn that spell?"
"Charms class, last year," answered Tom without a moment's hesitation. "Incendio, the fire-making charm." He gave the professor a wavering smile. "I suppose I got a bit carried away there. It was a uniquely disturbing situation for me."
Dumbledore nodded. "I will not deny that facing down a boggart for the first time can be disturbing. But, Tom, you destroyed it."
"A boggart is an amortal being, according to Slinkhard's Defensive Magical Theory. Similar to a poltergeist, it's neither alive nor dead, so I can't have killed it," Tom quoted from the textbook. Hermione did it all the time in class, and the teachers tossed House points at her like they thought Ravenclaw deserved a chance at winning the House Cup. "And I can't say I'm sorry for... destroying, as you describe it, a creature—a magical object—that only exists to make people feel bad. Am I wrong? Am I a bad person, sir, for not being worried about it?
"In my view, I think you should be more concerned with the students accidentally Vanishing or disfiguring their specimen animals in your Transfiguration class. Those beetles are definitely alive." Tom coughed for emphasis before he continued. "Or were, that is. I always treat mine with respect. I, for one, saw Merton Bancroft poke his beetle so hard with his wand that its wing fell off. If anyone needs watching, it's him—there's something not quite right about how quickly he goes through his practice animals."
"I will make a note of that when lessons resume next term," said Dumbledore genially, before he adjusted his spectacles and leaned forward. "However, it seems to me that your moral qualms would not be an issue at all, if you simply used the spell Professor Merrythought taught in class. Riddikulus."
"In hindsight, perhaps. But, sir, is it unreasonable for a person to confront their worst fear in the face, and not be able to call it ridiculous?"
"Would you like to talk about it, Tom?"
"No, sir," said Tom. "I'm not sure how that would help my situation."
"Nevertheless," Dumbledore spoke in a tone that wouldn't permit further quibbling, "I'm afraid that you haven't explained the 'situation'—" and Tom could hear the emphasis on the word, as if Dumbledore thought the situation they were in right now was ridiculous, and Tom's reluctance to speak about it baffling. "—As you see it. I should like to be enlightened, if you don't mind."
But Tom did mind, so he decided to give Dumbledore the abridged version.
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The 'Situation', as Tom settled on calling it, not having any better name to use, had its roots in the summer holiday.
There was no definite single moment or act during the summer that had directly led to the incident in Defence class. It was a number of things, a compilation of abstract ideas and images that Tom saw as weaknesses, brought out into the light and paraded in front of half the students in his year, to be laughed at.
The first moment was when it had sunk in that he was out of the orphanage, the place that he hated, but for most of his life, was the only place he'd ever known and had expected to know until he was eighteen. He was in the Grangers' house, and the implications of that offer of hospitality had not struck him until he'd woken up the next morning in an unfamiliar bed, washed his face in an unfamiliar bathroom, and when he was more than half-awake, he'd looked into the unfamiliar mirror.
The mirror was a single rectangular pane, uncracked, no signs of mildew growing between the glass and the silver backing. It was fogged up from someone having showered a few minutes before he'd gone in. When he tore back the curtain on the shower, he saw a clean porcelain tub—no suspicious black rings around the inside of the tub, and again, no mildew or a line of mossy green under the faucet fixture—and then the foggy steam spiraled out, smelling sweetly of flowers.
A floral scent—a very familiar scent—and in that moment, Tom felt ill.
Ill wasn't exactly the best way to describe it, but he couldn't think of what else that it could be, as he couldn't remember experiencing this particular malady before. It made him uncomfortable, as if there was something caught in his throat, not a lump of phlegm, but words trapped inside his chest like a consumptive cough; he felt as though he was meant to say something, but he had no idea what to say and why he should speak at all—
He'd already begun dissecting his symptoms and possible causes—diphtheria, tuberculosis, athsma, anaphylaxis—didn't Dr. Granger have a bookshelf in the sitting room filled with medical textbooks he could run down and borrow without anyone noticing?—before he realised that while the discomfort was strange due to its unfamiliarity, he wasn't exactly screaming in pain, coughing up chunks of bloody lung tissue, or having a seizure on the bathroom floor.
That scent followed him around the rest of the summer. He chose to avoid it where he could, and focused his thoughts on other, more important things when he couldn't. In the end, he considered it one of the many ordeals of surviving middle class suburban life, in the same category as making mealtime conversation, and offering to help clear the table each time, even though he preferred to go back to his room to study.
He considered himself lucky to have come out of it unscathed.
(In the back of his mind, he still associated that scent with his first summer of unlimited magic.)
The second moment was the day the Germans attacked London.
He'd known already that the German airplanes had targeted other parts of Britain in the weeks preceding the attack on London. Airfields and supply bases and ports, logistical centres that only made sense to Tom to go after first. The kind of tactics the Germans had used against their neighbours were those that disabled their opponents before the opponents had a chance to retaliate.
He had supposed, along with most of the British civilian population who weren't actively engaged in the war effort, that they could keep their heads down and let the soldiers and generals sort out the conflict. The German agenda wasn't their own, and the politics behind entering the war, whatever personal opinions they might hold, was the dominion of ministers and statesmen. They would ration their resources, follow the news from overseas, but for the most part, life went on, and they weren't directly affected beyond the rising prices of basic goods at the grocery market, and the complete disappearance of luxury goods.
Then the bombings began, a week or two before the start of the school term, each night-time raid growing closer and closer to the centre of London.
Tom spent his evenings wondering what would happen if the cellar door was blocked on the outside by fifty tonnes of rubble. A Levitation Charm was one of the first spells he'd learned at school, but they'd practised by lifting feathers and textbooks in class. Tom knew he could lift his bedstead if he pushed himself, but that was a single solid piece of metal. Lifting a thousand crumbly bits of brick and asphalt and broken glass was another challenge altogether. How would one use the charm without having to levitate one brick at a time? Was it a matter of focusing his intent, or a different wand movement beyond the standard swish-and-flick?
He experimented with variations on simple First and Second Year spells to fill in the hours between dinner and breakfast. He succeeded in non-verbal casting for a few of them, because after so many repetitions he didn't need the words to focus his mind on the spell. But as productive as he could be—and he chose to be productive when he otherwise would have spent the night staring at the ceiling—some part of him couldn't help wonder if all this effort would be for naught.
The magic tent had a bathroom that ensured they'd never run out of fresh water, but they only had a limited supply of food, and the only person in the household who could duplicate food and Apparate was Mr. Pacek, who wasn't really a part of the household at all.
(Neither was Tom himself, for that matter.)
Tom had gone to the Defence lesson tense, without the confidence he'd had in every other lesson, where he'd known without a doubt that he was the best in the class.
He headed straight for the back of the queue and ignored the pushing and back-thumping bravado that the other Slytherin boys used to disguise their insecurities. He didn't care about what might pop out for them when they stood in front of the wardrobe in the centre of the classroom. It was probably something as stupid, trite, and insignificant as a broken racing broomstick, or their mothers' likenesses telling them that they were illegitimate bastards who were never going to inherit the family holdings.
Poor babies, thought Tom. It was pathetic that their sense of self-worth was completely dependent on their surnames.
Tom was the last to face the boggart.
He stood in front of the wooden armoire, watching the double-leaved doors creak open to reveal the face of his worst fears.
It wasn't a face at all.
It was a formless pile lumped on the floor in front of his feet. Masonry, loose bricks and powdered mortar, chunks of torn concrete baring great spears of steel rebar like the ribs of a beached whale.
This isn't very scary, thought Tom, raising his wand and revising the wand movements.
Clink!
A pebble shifted off the pile and rolled over to Tom's left foot. He glanced down at the rubble, and his eyes widened.
There was a hand, smeared with blood, coated in dust, scrabbling around the debris. Pale skin, slender fingers, short-trimmed nails, scraping away at the crushed brickwork, to reveal a gnarl of white wooden flinders. The bodiless hand dug at the rubble, frantically now, uncovering more bits of wood, all of them smashed into thin splinters, then a bedraggled orange feather, and finally, a dirty and tattered bit of pink cloth. A piece of someone's clothing—what appeared to be the sleeve of a little girl's coat, with gold buttons on the cuff winking under a layer of grime...
Tom wasn't afraid when he stared down at his boggart.
He was angry.
He couldn't remember ever feeling as angry as he did in this moment. This wasn't the kind of bitter aggravation he'd have felt at being sent to bed without supper, or being smacked by the schoolmaster for speaking out of turn. This was pure outrage, the kind of all-consuming, blinding fury he would have felt had he returned to Wool's for the summer and seen some grubby little orphan in his room, sprawled over his bed, dirty shoes planted flat on the blanket, perusing his books, his trinket collection, all his belongings and worldly possessions...
The stupid boggart was wearing his form.
He'd forgotten he was supposed to cast Riddikulus while thinking of something funny to turn it into. In that moment, humour was the furthest thing from his mind.
Tom pointed his wand at the wardrobe, and the first spell he thought of, a spell that came automatically to his hand and mind, was one he knew would make it go away for good.
He cast it without a second thought.
A few seconds later, he felt a wave of heat billow up in front of him, like a thick woollen blanket pressed against his mouth and lips, squeezing the breath from his lungs; he heard a shrill squeal, and then clanking from within the wardrobe, like the sound produced by turning on a rusty, half-frozen tap in the middle of winter. He heard screaming children behind him, the thunder of their feet as they backed away from the boggart's pyre, and then Professor Merrythought was yelling at everyone to calm down and step back, and head on out into the corridor until she could get the mess cleared up.
He hadn't meant to cause the desks behind the wardrobe to go up in smoke, but the wardrobe itself was definitely deliberate.
When Merrythought had set the classroom back to rights, she'd patted him on the shoulder and told him that since he was the last, and everyone else had had their turn, there was no harm done. Then she asked him for his wand.
"What for?" asked Tom, in the midst of brushing the soot off his robes.
"I'd like to see what spell you used," said the professor, "since you cast it non-verbally."
"Oh," said Tom. He could do Lumos, Wingardium, and Silencio, and he was working on Alohomora, but he hadn't gotten to the point where he could cast Incendio without speaking the incantation. Well, apparently he could now. He reached into his pocket and drew out his wand. "Here you go."
Merrythought tapped his wand with hers, and a small, transparent tongue of flame wobbled out of the end of Tom's wand like the head of burning matchstick.
"'Incendio'," pronounced Merrythought. "Yours was so powerful that it almost looked like a Confringo, which won't be taught until your N.E.W.T. years. I'd have had to report this incident to your Head of House for further review if that were the case."
"Sorry for causing all the trouble," said Tom ruefully, shuffling his feet. "But, Professor, I read that Confringo had a kinetic aspect; it produces fire and force, while Incendio produces only the fire."
"You're correct, Riddle. Two points to Slytherin," replied Professor Merrythought. She handed his wand back to him. "A Confringo that produces force in ratio with the fire of your Incendio would have sent the desks flying to the opposite wall, broken the windows, and caused a tornado of splinters to blast the whole classroom. It's a spell best applied outdoors. So, Mr. Riddle, I should advise you to stick to the curriculum next time. If there is any difficulty in completing the class assignment, ask a teacher before you attempt something on your own."
"Of course, Professor." Tom bobbed his head, the anger having faded away to leave him with his usual low-level annoyance with the people around him. He'd rather not have to smarm it up with his professor, but he didn't regret setting the boggart on fire one bit.
"We'll call this one an early mark," she sighed. Then she pointed him out the door and told him to inform the other students that they could go to lunch ten minutes early.
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"—And it wasn't so much that there was a body under that rubble, but the fact that it was mine," said Tom, setting his teacup back on the saucer. "It reminded me that with the Muggle war going on, a bomb falling on me while I'm asleep isn't out of the realm of possibility, at least compared to the other students' boggarts. I admit, the grindylow one was scary, but the one with the giant talking centipede was just absurd."
"Are you afraid of it coming true, Tom?" asked Dumbledore. He'd eaten his way through two trays of biscuits during Tom's (abbreviated) recounting of the Defence class incident.
"Who wouldn't be afraid of it?" said Tom. "Students aren't allowed to stay at Hogwarts during holidays, magic isn't allowed out of school, and the majority of Muggle-raised students don't have access to the same safety features that their wizard-born peers have. Sir, of course I think it's alarming."
"Is it the Muggle bombs or the concept of death itself that troubles you?"
"Death, of course," said Tom. "The bomb could easily be something else: being gassed in the streets, a mis-aimed mortar landing in the wrong place, or being shot in the back and bleeding out during an actual invasion. There's quite a lot of variety actually, although I do have my doubts on whether they'd offer me a chance to pick and choose."
He had hated his boggart's appearance, but the pile of rubble was preferable to seeing a magical representation of Private Fritz stepping out of the wardrobe and pointing a loaded machine gun at the class. His dorm mates had been respectful of the Incident afterwards, the Slytherin boys pretending that they weren't curious about why Riddle's greatest fear was a midden, and Tom pretending that they hadn't screamed like girls on their way out of the classroom. He didn't think that they would be quite so respectful if they'd seen what was obviously a Muggle man in a strange uniform as Tom's weakness.
He knew he could produce a decent Shield Charm, but it was shield-shaped, a flat half-dome that appeared in front of the caster's wand. It wasn't a full protection. He knew from attending meetings with the Duelling Club that while he could protect his front, someone could always aim and hit him in the back when he wasn't looking. In London, it wouldn't be a Tickling Charm or Tripping Hex he'd have to watch out for, but an actual lead bullet or shrapnel grenade.
"Death is not always the worst fate to befall a person," said Dumbledore, calmly gazing at Tom over the remains of the tea tray. "One tends to enjoy their life more when they accept that it's not always a final end, but rather, a fresh beginning."
If Tom had been three years younger, he would have gaped at the professor upon hearing those words; had Tom been six years younger, he would have pushed his chair back and walked out, as he had done during Reverend Rivers' regular Easter visit to the orphanage. The good Father had told the flock of orphans that their parents might have left them, but they shouldn't let it bother them, because Mummy and Daddy were sure to be happy in God's blessed arms, and one day they would reunite... but only if they were good little boys and girls who listened to Mrs. Cole and remembered their bedtime prayers.
But Tom was fourteen, and he had become wise to the ways of the world. He knew that some adults were so self-important as to think that they had been given a greater calling, and if they were ever placed in a position of power, saw it as their duty to safeguard their lessers. Queen Victoria had forced her values on British society for over half a century; Professor Dumbledore was now doing it to Tom. And the next thing he knew, Dumbledore would be slipping Tom pamphlets inside his marked homework, inviting him to join a wizarding Freemasonry society or something.
If Slughorn could host his own mentoring club right under the Headmaster's nose, then Dumbledore could do it too.
Tom knew that he was sensationalising the situation, but nothing made him want to pull out his Devil's Advocate pitchfork as much as someone attempting to set themselves up as his morality supervision.
"A fresh beginning?" said Tom, cocking his head and mentally sharpening the tines of his pitchfork. "I'm afraid that I'm not very well-informed on the nature of wizarding religion. Do wizards believe in re-incarnation?"
"Not a religion as such, but it's my personal belief—and one shared by the majority of wizards and witches—that the soul of a magical being is immortal and continues on after the physical passing of the body."
"That sounds like religion to me," Tom remarked, and was tempted to ask if boggarts had souls. He guessed that since they weren't classified as 'beings' in the textbooks, they didn't. But making a point out of it, and gloating over the moral implications of the Incident, or lack of them, was pushing the envelope too far for his comfort. "Are you sure there's not a wizarding Heaven? If there is, I don't think my Housemates would want it unless they were sure they wouldn't have to share it with Muggles."
"What happens in the beyond is up to your own imagination," replied Dumbledore, watching Tom carefully. Tom's expression didn't twist into a sneer of derision as it would have for Reverend Rivers. He met Dumbledore's eyes calmly and refused to look away or blink, even when he started feeling his eyelids prickle from holding them open for so long. "But personally, I think of death as the next great adventure."
"I beg your pardon, sir," said Tom, hoping that he didn't sound as incredulous as he felt, "are you saying that one should look forward to dying?"
"I merely suggest that when the time comes—as everyone's time must come—one ought not to face it with fear," Dumbledore said, giving him a pleasant smile.
"Well, I suppose I'll keep that in mind when I go back to London for the summer," Tom said in a flat voice.
"Tom, you have my sympathies. The situation isn't ideal, and I understand if you've felt that the school authorities are not people you're willing to turn to," Dumbledore spoke earnestly, his eyes imploring behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, and for a few seconds Tom almost found himself believing the old man. "I know that I wasn't able to offer you a solution in your first year here, but it would be remiss of me to disregard your concerns now. I believe I can offer you a solution that will grant you some peace of mind."
"'Peace of mind'?" echoed Tom. "It's not conclusive proof of wizard Heaven, is it?"
Dumbledore slid open his desk drawer, rooted around for a few seconds, and drew out what looked like a button on a piece of string. A large button in the style one would find on an overcoat or mackintosh, round and made out of wood instead of Bakelite, with four holes punched in the centre where it could be sewed onto a garment.
Dumbledore held it up over the desk, turning it over and showing it to Tom. It really was just a wooden button, strung on a bit of twine as would be used for tying parcels for owl mail.
"This is a single-use Portkey," he said, "one that will activate if you tap it with your wand and say the word 'Dumbledore'. I expect you to use it only in the direst emergency. Hogwarts will be closed for the summer, and I will be travelling abroad during the summer once again, so I cannot be present to meet you. Instead, this Portkey will transport you to Hogsmeade, to the front step of one of the taverns. The barkeeper there will grant you lodging until it's safe enough to return to London."
Tom took the button and ran his fingers over it. It looked like a button and felt like a button, not like anything magical at all. "And you're giving this to me now, sir?"
"The incident in your Defence class made me hope that you would seek help from others if you were given help in return," said Dumbledore, closing his desk drawer and setting his hands on his desk. "I have viewed Galatea's recollection of what happened that day, and the non-verbal casting technique you demonstrated is one I believe I have seen before. It's a method of casting that puts power before precision, and is one favoured by schools that teach martial magics—an offensive approach that isn't taught at Hogwarts, where we emphasise defence. I'm curious as to where you learned it."
"It seems intuitive to me," said Tom, who had some suspicions of what Dumbledore was trying to tiptoe around asking. "Strange things used to happen to me when I was younger, but I know now that it was accidental magic. I didn't know any incantations, nor did I even own a wand for the proper movements, so it always seemed possible to perform magic without having to follow the directions from a book. Just wanting or needing something was enough to make things happen."
"Is there anything else you can tell me about it, Tom?"
"No, sir," said Tom. "Nothing."
"Very well," said Dumbledore. "I must ask you to be more careful with that kind of magic in future. Refinement and precision are useful magical skills that a wizard cannot properly learn if he only ever relies on raw power. And there are some solutions that cannot be found just by applying more power. Alchemy, the magical discipline I teach N.E.W.T. students, is an example of such."
"Thank you for the advice." Tom squeezed the Portkey button in his hand, feeling the rounded edges digging into his palm. "Is that all, sir?"
"I look forward to seeing you in class next term," said Dumbledore, standing up and brushing crumbs off his purple robes. He pulled his wand out of his sleeve and tapped the tea tray, which disappeared with a small pop. "You'll find out officially next week, but I am happy to tell you that you achieved the top score out of the year on the end of term exam."
.
.
The Wardrobe Incident, as it was called in the Slytherin Common Room, helped solidify Tom's reputation in his House. Taking first place in his age bracket in the Duelling Club, and pushing Fourth Year former-first Abraxas Malfoy to second, cemented it.
It hadn't even been that difficult.
Malfoy was ahead by a year in the Defence curriculum, but Tom had already read through the textbooks in the library, so he could counter every standard jinx and hex. They were relatively even in speed and reflexes—Malfoy held a position on the House Quidditch team—but Malfoy's advantage came in the form of obscure spells Tom had never heard of, likely from his family's own library.
Tom decided to match him with personal innovation: he cast a silent Wingardium on Malfoy's robes—the Levitation Charm was most effective cast on inanimate subjects rather than living things—and immediately followed it up by clipping him with a precisely aimed pair of Knockback Jinxes on shoulder and elbow, each wand movement swift, the final flick of each spell flowing efficiently into the beginning of the next, well-practised from his sleepless nights of private training. Malfoy spun around like a human pinwheel and missed his aim on his next counterspell, whereupon Tom hit him with a final Petrificus and sent him toppling off the edge of the duelling platform.
From an observer's point of view, Tom's speed and silent casting made it look like he'd only cast one spell, not four. Afterwards, younger students pestered him in the Common Room to teach them his "Spinning Jinx", which they couldn't find in the Defence textbook. Even some of the older students were curious about it.
His reputation had also been helped when Lestrange had let slip that Tom was a half-blood, mentioning the meeting in Diagon Alley in the summer before Second Year. The majority of his House thought it was disgusting for a witch to mate with a Muggle, which was why they'd assumed "Riddle" was his surname instead of anything more magical—but a witch was still a person of magical blood, so they kept their mouths shut. Tom didn't correct their assumptions; the best way to lie and get away with it was to allow other people to build their own lies for him, with him nodding and tutting at the right points to suggest one thing, but at the same time ensuring his own deniability. It was better that they think this, as he hadn't the same proof to show them that it was his father who was magical.
He certainly wasn't going to tell them the "witch" who was with him was Mrs. Granger, because if a witch mating with a Muggle was bad, then a Muggle with another Muggle was even worse. But if anyone was bold enough to insult his blood status behind his back—because he'd made them stop saying it to his face by the end of First Year—they weren't doing it now.
Another thing that happened, although Tom didn't know how exactly it had come to be, was that he had somehow taken leadership over the boys in his dormitory. It had just sort of... become the status quo over the course of Third Year for the Slytherin boys to defer to Tom, and to stand by him when anyone tried to slander him in the Common Room—though this was less and less common as the months went on, only limited to some of the girls in his year.
Tom didn't understand girls as well as he did boys. They didn't respond to open, straightforward displays of power like the Slytherin boys. If he had tried his classic "conditioning tactics", a boy would bear the pain until he snapped, and then Tom was there to pick up the pieces and put them back together in a manner closer to his liking. A girl, on the other hand, would think it was some form of feminine ailment and go straight to the Hospital Wing for a potion, and that would be the end of it.
So he'd turned them on each other by sending Peanut into their dormitory—because there was a jinx preventing boys from entering the girls' dorm, but a loophole for male animals. Peanut had gone through the contents of their nightstands, collecting earrings, bracelets, and jewelled hairpins from all the girls, then hid them inside the trunk of another girl. It was a timeless technique that had served him well during rainy days at the orphanage.
(And the screeching had been so satisfying that he hadn't even Silenced his curtains for the night.)
Several weeks later, Everard was still not speaking to Sidonie Hipworth. That was the funny thing about girls that Tom would never understand—their singleminded stubbornness about the most insignificant issues. Of course, Tom himself could be stubborn with his personal grudges when he had reason to be, but his reasons were always significant. There was a difference.
The younger students didn't try anything against him, having found Tom less intimidating and more helpful with schoolwork than the prefects, and the oldest students were too busy preparing for their exams to bother with the "games of children".
(It was the in-between students like Malfoy and Hastings who were the most trouble, but Malfoy had been put quite thoroughly in his place, and Hastings had never gotten over his public humiliation and subsequent nicknaming. He still had his family connections, but had nonetheless lost Slughorn's eye, and the prefect position he'd apparently had his heart set on had gone to someone else.)
The first sign of the status quo changing was when Avery began taking the seat next to Tom at breakfast, trying to wheedle hints about the answers to last week's homework that he was trying to finish up before class started in thirty minutes. Then it was Lestrange sitting on his other side the day of the Welcoming Feast in Second Year, the other boy still convinced that Tom cared about his medical conditions. Travers and Rosier began picking up on the way Lestrange and Avery fought with each other to be Tom's Potions partner, before Tom had set up a system where they took turns and paid for any ingredients that weren't in the student supply cupboard.
Nott, for all his father's beliefs in blood purism, had kept to himself for most of First Year, and had not suffered the same level of disciplinary pranking that Tom had administered to the other boys. It was only when they'd discussed Grindelwald's march on Europe late one night when the other boys were asleep—Tom's bed was next to the window, and Nott's was the one beside it—and Tom had laid out his own arguments as to the feasibility of Grindelwald's agenda, as well as its applicability to the social structure of Magical Britain, that Nott had grudgingly begun to associate with him in public.
None of that meant that any of them liked each other. The other boys had realised that Tom wasn't just some no-name Sorting fluke, not a mistake made by a threadbare old hat whose enchantments were wearing out, but someone who truly embodied Slytherin virtues. And they recognised from the growing number of convenient accidents that it was better to be on Tom's side, or behind him, than to stand in his way.
"I don't agree with lumping Muggleborns in the same category as Muggles. Grindelwald is right about his 'Magic is Might' slogan; it doesn't make sense to limit his wizarding nation to purebloods and half-bloods only," argued Tom. "I'm not sure if the Ministry of Magic takes a population census—and if there is one, I haven't seen it, so I'm only going off how many of our classmates have siblings. But I know for fact that the average Muggle woman in Britain has three children, and if she has enough dormant magical blood to produce a magical child, then each child she bears has a chance at being a wizard.
"Grindelwald, no matter what he might personally believe—he went to Durmstrang, where Muggleborns aren't allowed to enroll—must recognise that Muggleborn recruits are a guaranteed way to bolster his army. Their families wouldn't put up a fuss the same way an old pureblood family would at losing their heir."
It was the same reason why older orphans and the lowest tier of manual labourers went to enlist as infantrymen in the British army, and why the powers within the recruitment offices would never give the same first-line trench-digging assignments to The Honourable James Aubrey Fairweather-Dickson-Smythe III, finding him a much less exposed situation as a minor subaltern in one of the cavalry regiments, where he'd have a chance to wear a spiffy uniform with gold pips on the shoulders, but no chance of seeing proper action.
"Besides," Tom continued, "it goes against his agenda of a united wizarding nation if he's split it up into purebloods and half-bloods plus the honorary Muggleborns who've passed some manner of arbitrary qualification scheme, and then the rest who haven't. I'm not sure what would even happen to the legitimacy of such an agenda if a Muggleborn passed the qualifications and publicly refused to take the rank up."
"That's a pragmatic way of looking at it," whispered Nott from the opposite bed. They had their curtains pulled closed around their four-posters, except for where their beds faced each other. "But most pureblooded wizards wouldn't like being in the same rank as anyone who wasn't one."
Tom stood up and tapped his wand against Nott's curtain, casting a wordless Silencio. Instantly, the volume of Lestrange's snoring from the other side dropped. They would still hear him until they closed their curtains all the way, but with this, they'd know if any of their dorm mates woke up.
Nott's eyes flicked to Tom's wand, then to his face, his gaze cool and assessing.
"I expect there must be a reason why the Hat put me in Slytherin," Tom replied, sitting down on his own bed and setting his wand on the nightstand. "I'm only looking at it in terms of what I would do were I in Grindelwald's situation. If it were me, I would offer equal rights to anyone who can prove magical blood, and then offer special privileges on top of that to anyone who can prove... exceptional." Tom's lips curved into a thin smile, then he added, "Most people would be happy with fair treatment, but you'd have to find some way to recognise the ambitious within the system, or they'd try to undermine the system from the outside. It's only sensible."
Napoleon had his Garde Impériale, his élite personal bodyguard. The emperors of Rome had had a Praetorian Guard for their imperial households, which the Emperor Tiberius had put to good use by pruning his political enemies... although they'd later turned on the Emperor Caligula and assassinated him. Tom had read of Caligula's eccentricities, but he didn't care how or why the historians tried to justify it post facto. He was more interested in what kind of precedent it set; it made him conscious of the possibility of betrayal.
He knew that magic had limits, as it had been one of the first things he'd looked up once he'd gained access to Hogwarts' library. The five exceptions to Gamp's Law had stated that it wasn't possible to produce love with magic—but it said nothing about using magic to ensure loyalty. The idea of rewarding the talented and deserving, and above all, the loyal, sounded immensely appealing to him. If he ever became Emperor Tom the Great, then he would have to find some way to share his victory with Hermione, his first... minion?
No, he thought. She would never accept being my vassal, and I would never make her one. It's too close to 'peon' for my personal taste. No, there must be a better analogy for what we would be.
I think, if I were a Dictator, I should have a Consul.
Tom the Great, Dictator for Life, because an Emperor by any other name was just as powerful. And his loyal companion, Consul Hermione the Just, who was accorded the power of veto, but only used it for good reason—and not every other morning because she thought the great dictator was taking too long in the bathroom.
He tried to picture how she'd look in laurels. Maybe they'd get so tangled up in her hair that he'd have to cut them out with a pair of gardening shears, and she would yell at him about how his ideas always sounded good on paper, but he had no head for the practical aspects. (That was what she was for.) But it wouldn't matter, because Hermione with golden leaves in her curly hair was not an objectionable sight, not at all; he thought it would be—
"'Exceptional'," murmured Nott, laying back on his bed and folding his arms beneath his head. "What exactly do you mean by that, Riddle?"
"I mean that a good leader should always find suitable positions for the intelligent and competent," said Tom, re-gathering his thoughts from its strange tangent. He wasn't ill again, was he? He plumped up his pillow and pulled back the blankets.
"And not the pure of blood?"
"If purity of blood makes one exceptional, then there should be no issue with passing a test for basic competence."
"Only sensible," Nott agreed. "You might not be aware of it with wherever you came from, but granting or revoking privileges is a... sensitive subject. A political issue, to those who have had theirs for generations."
"Hmm," Tom mused, pulling the blankets under his chin. "I'll have to find out what Grindelwald did with the European old families. He's taken half a dozen Ministries already; he must have found a way to manage them."
Or keep them in line, more like, he thought. Grindelwald is a Dark Lord; there's only so far he would go to appease anyone.
"I could ask Father if he knows anything?"
"Don't bother," said Tom, yawning. "I've got my own sources."
"You are a singular fellow, Riddle."
"Good night, Nott."