1943
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As the days of Sixth Year rolled by, everyone but Tom looked forward to Christmas as a reprieve from their studies.
For the first decade or so of his life, he had been ambivalent about Christmas, both the secular and religious interpretations of it. Christmas was a hollow experience to Tom, who had nothing to celebrate—not that the orphanage could have afforded much of a celebration. Christmas; his birthday; winter in general: to most people, including Tom, these things had an emotional significance. In Tom's particular case, the so-called Season of Merriment was associated with privation and resentment, and a miserable, biting cold that burrowed so deep into his joints that it hurt to sit up and get out of bed in the mornings.
Until Hogwarts, he had never known what everyone else saw in Christmas, and even now, it was still unknown to him. Nevertheless, the season had formed its own significance over the years. Christmas to Tom wasn't about conjured tinsel on charmed trees or endless slabs of fruitcake; it was a taste of adult independence, no classes or teachers or minders, all the books he wanted to read, and all the magic he wanted to study in a Common Room he had to himself.
He'd spent Christmas at Hogwarts for every one of the past five years, and a Hogwarts Christmas had become the status quo, his personal ideal of what Christmases ought to be. It was a special occasion worth celebrating, in his own way of doing it.
And now Dumbledore and Mary Riddle were upending Christmas for their own selfish schemes, while at the same time assuring him that it was all for his own good.
Tom counted the passing weeks with growing disquiet, each sign of winter's arrival a reminder of how long he had left to live his life as a wizard. The first morning frost in October coating the fallen leaves, crisp under the soles of his shoes when he marched out to the greenhouses for Herbology; the darkening of the water under the Lake which made it necessary to keep the fireplaces in the Slytherin Common Room lit throughout the day; the mealtime offerings in the Great Hall changing from sweet ices and fresh fruit jellies to hearty roasts and baked puddings...
Hermione didn't understand his feelings about the Riddles—not really.
She found the Riddles to be disagreeable, but not irredeemable. They were set in their ways as much as Tom was, but were willing to accommodate him, and she thought it was only fair that Tom do the same. Despite not being able to undo the years of his life in which he'd resigned himself to being an orphan, the Riddles were making an attempt to rectify it, giving him all he was entitled to as a member of their family.
"I never asked for it," Tom had said, in response to Hermione's presenting her views on the matter. "Surely I have the right to refuse it!"
"No one ever asked to be born, let alone given a choice of how and what they're born with," Hermione pointed out, "but we do the best we can with our circumstances."
"I can do better on my own," said Tom. "But they're... they're forcing me to be one of them."
The last word was followed by a grimace; Tom maintained an internal separation between me and them, the latter of which encompassed all the distaste he felt for the Riddles' mediocrity and ordinariness. The only thing remarkable about them was their wealth, which they had through no effort of their own; Mary Riddle had married into it, and Thomas Riddle had inherited it from his forebears.
"It's only for a few weeks out of the whole year," replied Hermione, who, rather annoyingly, wasn't as sympathetic about Tom's state of affairs as he wanted her to be. "It's not that bad. Young women were, and still are, forced into much worse situations than yours all the time—and not just for Christmas, but for the rest of their lives. So I can't see any way to say it better than this: you're just going to have to close your eyes and think of England."
This made Tom grumble a bit, until he remembered that Hermione had volunteered to spend the holidays with him. If England was going to be thought of this Christmas, he was pleased to know he wouldn't be thinking alone.
On the day the Hogwarts Express was due to leave Hogsmeade Station, the Slytherin boys packed their trunks—lacking the forethought to begin packing earlier—and dropped Tom's Christmas presents on his bed.
His Second Year, Lestrange and Avery bought him token Christmas gifts. From Fourth Year, every single boy in his dormitory gave him something, and that number had only grown to include Slytherins from other years, as well as some non-Slytherins he shared his classes with. Most of it was useless trinkets. Tom had no use for glittery handmade cards; he couldn't eat that many sweets—nor would he risk touching anything that looked obviously homemade or tampered with. The glow-in-the-dark enchanted bookmarks, chess sets, and gilt inkstands he didn't need doubles of, so he pawned them off at the Hogsmeade odds-and-ends shop, pocketing the money to buy the things he actually wanted.
(It seemed like Hermione was the only person who knew his tastes and gave him things worth keeping.)
Tom sent the wrapped gifts flying into his trunk, Summoning his scarf and cloak from his bureau.
"You're not staying at school?" asked Lestrange, whose hair had only just returned to its original colour a fortnight ago. He had been anxious about going home with his hair charmed Gryffindor red, the result of some sort of harmless inter-House pranking when he'd turned his back on the wrong person.
"I've been offered a place to spend the holidays," said Tom, "and I've accepted."
"If you were taking invitations, I'd have offered," Travers groused, digging through the top drawer of his nightstand for his enchanted earmuffs, imbued with a permanent Silencing Charm.
He wore them to sleep whenever the other boys stayed up late playing cards or passing around a dog-eared book that Lestrange had turfed up in a dusty corner of his father's library. Tom had glanced at the book when it was passed his way: Le Jardin Parfumé, a title printed and sold last century by a magical bookseller in Wizarding Paris. He'd not been surprised to open up a random page and get more of an eyeful than he'd expected—or even wanted—to see. The book itself was rather harmless, an anthology of short stories written in French that he could decipher with his passable grasp of Latin, but he assumed that the boys didn't care about that. It was the animated lithographs on every other page they were interested in: sultry, doe-eyed odalisques lounging on divans and feeding each other grapes, swathed in shimmering veils that left very little to the imagination.
(In the charmed illustrations, the girls batted their eyelashes, and their silken veils fluttered about in a beguiling manner; overall, it was suggestive and encroached on—without intruding into—the truly obscene. Tom had shoved the book away in disgust. They were pictures, mere illusions, and the way the other boys wrestled with one another for their turn to look was nothing more than pathetic.)
"Father likes meeting the top Defence students each year," continued Travers. "Usually sends someone to Sluggy's dinner dos, but with the Dark Lord and his people running amok, the department can't afford to spare active-duty Aurors on going around the social circuit."
"If you offer an invitation this summer, I might accept," said Tom noncommittally. "I'll have my Apparition license by then."
"Are you joining the Auror Trainees?" Rosier said. "Slughorn's been dropping hints left and right that the Ministry would take you in a shot—is that what he meant?"
"I've looked into it," Tom answered. He wrapped his scarf around his throat and cast a silent Featherweight Charm on his trunk. "But signing up for the training means three years before they let you see any action, and I can't see the sense in that. For other people, yes, but for me? I think I'd die of boredom before I'd even met a single dark wizard."
Rosier laughed; Nott scoffed.
"You think you can take on a dark wizard, Riddle?" Nott asked. "An Outstanding on the DADA practical only means you know your textbook jinxes. Real dark wizards have got a bit more bite to them."
"The average dark wizard has a three spell répertoire. A 'bite' is hardly impressive when everyone who takes them on knows how to counter them."
"Everyone knows the Unforgivables can't be countered," said Nott.
"They can't be blocked by standard Shield Charms," corrected Tom, "which isn't the same as being countered. And anyone can counter an Unforgivable if they're fast enough at Conjuration."
"And you are?"
Tom studied Nott with interest. Ever since the Bathroom Incident of a year ago, Nott had avoided making conversation with him at meals and at the weekly homework club meetings. He preferred to sit alone in class in lieu of joining the members of Tom's group, who'd gained a reputation as an élite fraternity of top students: all the members who had taken their O.W.L.s the previous year scored Outstandings in Defence, and were the highest ranked members of the Hogwarts Duelling Club.
(With the exception of Hermione, who hadn't joined the Duelling Club. She was something of an auxiliary member to Tom's group in that she was friends with Tom, but not with the other boys, and sat with her own Ravenclaw classmates table during meals.)
"I've gotten quite decent at non-verbal casting," said Tom. "If you'd like to have a go, I'm sure we can arrange a friendly duel sometime after the holidays."
Nott shifted from foot to foot, preventing Tom from making eye contact. A sheen of sweat glistened on Nott's upper lip, while one hand smoothed distractedly over his robes, as if he was feeling for the presence of his wand. The other boys watched their exchange with undisguised interest, as it had been years since anyone had challenged Tom on his duelling skills. The last had been, what, Abraxas Malfoy, two years ago? Malfoy, the petty loser he was, had quit the Duelling Club wholesale with the excuse that he wanted to concentrate on Quidditch and his exams, leaving Tom as the undisputed first.
He hadn't thought Nott would be the one to pluck up the courage to challenge him. But in the magical world, if pigs could be made to fly with some creative Transfiguration, few things should be counted as genuinely surprising. Nott wanting to be made an example of in an exhibition duel was nothing; he ought to save his astonishment for the day Nott announced his engagement to a Muggleborn.
"No," muttered Nott after a few seconds of internal debate, shaking his head. "No, that won't prove anything. An Unforgivable Curse cast by a student would only be mild at best, anyway."
Saying that, he grabbed the handle of his trunk and elbowed his way out of the dormitory, leaving Tom and the rest of the Slytherin boys to finish packing.
Avery spoke up when Nott was gone. "Do you know how to cast Unforgivables?"
Tom's gaze flicked to Travers, who had been trying and failing to pretend he was incurious about the conversations going around the dormitory. Travers' father was a Ministry official, so it would be foolish to make a public admission where it could be repeated unwittingly to outside ears.
"Anyone who reads the right book can know how they're cast."
It would also be ridiculous for Tom to admit that he couldn't do something.
The journey down to the station was subdued. Tom was busy immersing himself in his own thoughts, and something of it must have shown on his face. He was left to walk alone until Hermione joined him, peeling off a group of twittering Ravenclaws to bounce along beside him, her school trunk bobbing in the air in front of her upraised wand.
"It's eight hours from here to London, and then we'll have to transfer at King's Cross for the express from London to York—that's four hours—and from York to, what was it..." Hermione fumbled through the contents of her bookbag until she'd retrieved her datebook, flicking to the page marked with a length of ribbon. "Great Hangleton, that's it! Then there's another six miles to Little Hangleton. We'd be lucky to get there before midnight; I do hope they've made arrangements to collect us at the Hangleton station—I can't imagine a town of that size would have hackneys for hire..."
Nott, the first to have left the dormitory, had reserved a compartment for the rest of the group, chasing off any other students who saw one person sitting alone as an excuse to take over.
On the last two journeys to Hogwarts, Tom and Hermione sat with the other Prefects in the Heads' compartment. On the ride back to London for the summer, it was tradition for them to secure a compartment for themselves; for their first few years, that was the last time they'd be guaranteed to see each other in person before the start of the new school year. Tom hadn't liked the thought of being separated from Hermione, and was pleased to see that she thought the same thing, as she'd tucked herself in the corner of the compartment closest to the window, levitating her trunk into the overhead rack.
Nott sat on the opposite window seat, a book on the Hogwarts Founders open on his lap, showing coloured cross-sections of each Founder's wand and wood source. He ignored the juvenile antics of the rest of the boys as they tossed their bags into the rack, peeled off their robes and ties, and rummaged around in pockets and coin purses for snack money.
Tom had long wondered why Nott bothered to remain a member of the homework club, when he rarely participated in the usual Slytherin camaraderie that the other boys shared. Nott was wary and guarded around Tom, and had not shown any particular fondness toward Hermione. The only other reason he could see was Nott not wanting to fall behind in class, as the months of tutoring had set this year's Slytherin cohort ranks above the rest of the school, with Tom, naturally, taking his place at the very top.
Nott could dislike Tom all he wished, but it was far too dangerous to underestimate him. That, Tom surmised, must be the explanation for Nott's continued association with the group.
Greatness inspires envy; envy engenders spite.
That was a quote that Tom had come up with one dull morning in Charms class, and he'd liked it so much that he'd inscribed it on the first page of his diary. He'd seen Sidonie Hipworth and some of her friends write inspirational quotes with colour-changing ink on the covers of their revision notebooks, or a few lines of poetry on the importance of dreams and love. Tom found his own version to be vastly superior—of course it was; there was no competition between a quote he'd coined himself versus a snippet of sentimental folderol taken out of its original context.
There was an empty spot next to Hermione that Tom immediately took over, satisfied that his dorm mates had been trained to remember his personal seating preferences. There'd been a bit of a mix-up on the first day of N.E.W.T. Potions where he'd had to correct Lestrange's assumptions; the boy had showed up thinking that he and Tom would be partners as they had been back when the class was split with the Gryffindors.
As Hermione had gotten rid of Fitzpatrick, her previous partner, Tom had been obliged to do the same to Lestrange. He hadn't noticed either of them feeling an ounce of remorse about the decision.
The train journey was quiet, with Hermione busy scribbling away in her datebook, and Tom reading a treatise on Latin-based spellcrafting. Lestrange, Avery, Rosier, and Travers had broken out a pack of cards, their playing stakes in the form of wrapped sweets piled in the centre seat. Occasionally, other students would knock on the compartment door to arrange holiday invitations with one of the occupants, often on behalf of their parents, but as Tom's family were Muggles, he himself received no invitations, and offered none of his own.
While Tom had never been keen on deferring to anyone's rules, he understood the reasoning behind wizarding secrecy. He'd learned as a child how tedious it was to be put under psychological examination by people who thought that being Special was just another name for being mad. And it wasn't as if his family would appreciate the marvels of the magical world. They were the type who'd choose village cricket over the windy heights of the spectator stands during a championship Quidditch match; they'd go to see a moralistic Christmas pantomime over a W.A.D.A. production of The Lady of Shalott.
(Not that Tom personally found much entertainment in Arthurian myths, but everyone revered Merlin as one of the greatest wizards of British history, and Tom wouldn't mind seeing some of his most famous feats replicated on stage, with magical effects. It would be an opportunity to learn how to replicate them with his own techniques.
They said imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, but wasn't one man's flattery another man's plagiarism? Tom believed he could do better than that; where other people imitated, there Tom could innovate, and then one day those same people would be flattering him.)
Those agreeable daydreams helped him pass several peaceful hours, and he was only interrupted by a strange voice from beneath the upholstered bench seat of the compartment. It was a very strange voice, indeed: Tom didn't recognise it as anyone he knew, and of those he knew, none of them spoke in a soft, sibilant whisper that was imperceptible to everyone but him.
He glanced around the train compartment, noting that the door was closed and locked. Travers had gone to sleep, his earmuffs on and a newspaper draped over his face to block the light. Avery and Lestrange were sorting through several boxes of jellybeans, picking out the greenish looking ones—those were either vomit, bogeys, or grass, which even people with low standards in life had apparently learned to avoid. Hermione had started her holiday homework, curled up in the corner of the seat; Nott, seated opposite, had his attention fixed firmly on his book, his jaw clenched. No doubt he was struggling to keep his opinions about his co-commuters to himself.
In the months since Tom had had to explain his standards of acceptable conduct, as was expected of a Prefect and student leader, Nott hadn't said another word about Hermione. Nott went out of his way not to speak to her, even when directly addressed, and this habit applied to Tom as well. Perhaps Tom's actions had not won over Nott's esteem, as he had for every other student in Slytherin, but he had the boy's deference, his complaisance, and in most instances, that was just as useful.
"...What is this place?" said the voice, faint and whispery. "I smell fresh food. Big food. Hsssss. Plenty of big food!"
A snake.
"Warm things, very slow moving things, yes, yes, which one to start with..."
There was a bloody snake on the train.
There was a bloody snake right under their seats.
"Hermione," said Tom, taking care not to make any sudden movements.
Hermione's fountain pen juddered to a stop over her page. "Yes?"
"Do you mind moving your legs this way?"
She looked at him blankly. "Whatever for?"
Tom grasped for the best excuse he could contrive, one which wouldn't send her into a panic. "You have interesting knees."
A pink flush bloomed on her cheeks, causing her to look away and down at her lap. "I can't tell whether or not you're trying to make a joke, but it's not funny!"
"Do I look like I'm having fun?" said Tom, his expression grave.
"Er," Hermione hesitated. "No?" With clear reluctance, she said, "A-alright. I still don't know if you're having a go at me, but this had better not be a joke."
Holding the hem of her skirt down for modesty, she swung her legs over to the aisle space in front of his seat.
Tom grabbed hold of her ankle and pulled her closer, until the backs of her knees were hooked over his lap.
Hermione yelped, her arms flying out and scrambling to keep the edge of her skirt from flipping up. "Tom!"
"Hermione," Tom sighed, slipping an arm around her waist and pulling her close. "Please don't panic."
"This seems so... so unnecessary!"
"There's a good reason for all this."
"If you wanted a hug, I would have given it, you know," Hermione said reproachfully, placing a tentative hand on his shoulder for balance, her legs dangling over his lap in a way that would have looked undignified—if it had been anyone else but him in such a position.
Tom took a slow breath, savouring Hermione's familiar scent, the real version, which was indistinguishable from the forgery produced in a cauldron. This real version was much better, being not just scent alone; it had a solid weight to it—touch and texture—that made it all the more satisfying than any illusory attempt at replication. His free hand rose up and cupped her knee, palm curving over her grey woollen stockings; he could feel each twitch of muscle as she shrank back in reflex, but in the end she didn't pull away from him.
She had such small knees, such delicate ankles, her physical proportions built on a smaller scale than his, but with so many shared, congruent points between the two of them. There was a joint of bone protruding at the ankle, the end of the fibula, and Tom's fingers traced down from her knee, down her calf, to that gentle swelling shape covered up by her prim uniform stockings.
He didn't know if she liked his knees, but in that moment, Tom knew that he liked hers. And there was more than her knees he rather liked...
"Tom!"
"Hmm?"
"What are you doing?"
"Oh, just looking."
"It seems to be a lot more than 'just looking'!"
"Should I stop, then?"
Hermione's face scrunched up. "Yes—I don't like it when other people are looking at us."
Tom tore his attention from Hermione's knees, and realised that his explorations had drawn curious glances from the other occupants of their compartment. They didn't quite dare to meet his gaze, but he saw how their eyes darted over to where Hermione was half-sprawled over his lap.
He drew his wand.
Magazines were suddenly brandished, cards shuffled with great aplomb, and chocolate bars unwrapped in studious silence.
A swirl of his wand, a silently cast Hover Charm, and Tom had the snake out from under the seat.
The snake undulated in the air, a few inches past two feet long, as thick around as Hermione's wrist. It had brown scales, patterned with a dark line of conjoined diamonds down its back, and a narrow, triangular wedge of a head from which gleamed a pair of red eyes. It didn't appear to enjoy the experience of being levitated in mid-air.
"What is this? What is this!" it hissed, its head swaying from side to side, trying to discern the cause of its unexpected translocation. "Too bright, my eyes, hssss!"
"Tom?" said Hermione, her hand tightening on his shoulder. "Was... was that under our seat?"
"Yes," Tom confirmed, keeping his wand pointed at the snake. "How do you think it got there?"
"Well, it wasn't me," she said. She reached for her own wand. "Look at the pattern, the eye colour. That's a common European adder—it's venomous! And it's December, so it should be in hibernation at this time of year. It must be someone trying a silly prank..." She let out a huff of indignation. "Someone could've gotten hurt! We're hours from London and Hogwarts, and even if the Heads have their Apparition licenses, it's impossible to do it from a moving train. If I find out who did it, they'll be getting detention for a month."
"Forget detention," Nott interrupted, leaning away from the hovering snake, "what are you going to do about that damn snake?!"
Tom flicked his wand, and the snake flipped around and swung towards Nott.
Nott squawked and fell back against his seat, his arm upraised to protect his face.
"Hssssss!"
The snake's jaw fell open, revealing the soft, white flesh of its mouth. From the upper jaw, there protruded two needle-sharp fangs, glistening with a clear venom. The snake jolted to a stop, one scaled coil passing within a whole foot of Nott; it didn't touch him, but that didn't stop him from making a scene and screaming loudly.
"Tom!" cried Hermione, fingernails digging into the meat of his shoulder, which wasn't that unpleasant when he considered it. He basked in the sensation, clutching her closer around the waist.
"What the fuck are you playing at, Riddle!" Nott shouted, fumbling for his wand. "Granger just said it's venomous!"
"Riddle," Rosier ventured nervously, looking around at the other boys, who didn't seem eager to put in their own opinions, "we don't mind the show, but, um, if you want to settle something with Nott, you might... you might want to maybe do it outside mixed company?" He sent a pointed look at Hermione. "Witches are sensitive about these kinds of things."
He was right; Hermione didn't look happy that he was playing around with a venomous snake, which he didn't consider particularly dangerous—he was certain that his reflexes were good enough to hit it with a Petrificus before it sunk its teeth into anyone.
And he was careful enough to adjust the Hover Charm so its head was always kept facing away from himself and Hermione, so if anyone was at risk of being bitten and dying—a tiny chance with a snake of this size—it wasn't anyone he'd miss.
"Fine," Tom said, rolling his eyes. "Finite!"
The snake didn't disappear.
"Oh," he observed, "it's not Conjured. That's interesting."
"Someone must have Summoned it," said Hermione, "if it's a real snake. We're moving too quickly for Summoning to work, unless whoever did it wanted to rip their hands off trying to grab something from outside the train window. That means someone put that snake here before we got on the train."
"'Murder on the Hogwarts Express'," Tom said in a thoughtful voice, looking at each of his fellow occupants in turn. "And so the plot thickens."
No one else seemed to get it, apart from Hermione, who sighed heavily into the crook of his neck.
Tom raised his wand, concentrated, and cast the spell: Evanesco!
The snake disappeared, vanishing into nothingness, and with that went the visible tenseness on clear display in bearing and countenance—with the exclusion of himself, naturally. He sensed the slow shift in atmosphere, the near-panic simmering down to a low-level unease which fluctuated whenever he held eye contact for more than a few seconds at a time. To his disappointment, Tom found no traces of guilt or deception in the minds of anyone he studied with a touch of applied willpower.
Things went back to normal, or as normal as things ever got when Tom Riddle was present and involved. However, the conversation, when it returned, was not as spirited as it had been before, the card games and betting stakes lacking in liveliness and enthusiasm. Tom didn't mind it, as he had more interesting things to focus on. There was the mystery of the snake, which he hadn't found an answer for—skimming through his dorm mates' surface thoughts a few more times hadn't given him any conclusive proof that one of them had done it.
So he couldn't name any one person as his culprit. For now.
Then there was the mystery of the feminine form, which he hadn't thought a mystery when the relevant information could be had from any anatomy textbook, or from Lestrange's illustrated novel, if he was that way inclined.
When it came to the feminine form as it related to Hermione Granger... well, that was a mystery that wasn't written down in any book, or published in any manual. And Tom, who had a curious nature and a vigorous appetite for knowledge, was eager to learn more about it, textbook or no.
With all the mysteries floating about, by the time the Express had arrived in London, he'd managed to piece together one bit of substantiated fact: knees had a power that not even the greatest of wizards should ever underestimate.
.
.
The Hogwarts Express reached London at a quarter to seven, which gave Tom and Hermione twenty minutes to grab their luggage, buy a hot pie and a bottle of milk each from the station tuck shop, then transfer to the platform where the London to York train was due to arrive in a matter of minutes.
By the end of the day, Tom would be at his grandparents' estate in Yorkshire. He'd seen photographs of it, enclosed in the letters written to him by Mary Riddle. The estate consisted of a sleepy country town with the largest buildings, a church and a post office, erected around a village green, with side streets branching off, filled with rows of terrace houses and small cottages let out to various tenants. And overlooking the town was a house on a hill, 'the Big House', as the villagers called it, occupied by a Family of Quality—as his grandmother called it.
Tom didn't know what that meant exactly, but from context, he assumed it was his grandmother attempting to dissociate the Riddles' social ranking from the likes of the villagers. The villagers might work for the Riddles, and the Riddles might depend on the villagers' labour, but that was to be the extent of the relationship; Riddles and villagers certainly didn't entertain one another's company, except after church services and at formal functions—Empire Day, Royal Jubilees, and other commemorations. Riddles certainly did not make advances upon them. (By the way Mary Riddle's pen had blotched up the page and created indents visible through the other side of the paper, it appeared that she hadn't gotten over her son's great 'betrayal'.)
This place, this town, the Big House—this was to be his new home. He couldn't tear his thoughts away from that word, Home, as he boarded the First Class carriage with Hermione at his heels, their tickets in hand for the conductor's inspection. Once inspected and approved, they were shown to a compartment, and their luggage stowed for them by a porter, whom they were obliged to tip a few pence for the service.
"This isn't much different from the Hogwarts Express," Hermione observed, looking around the interior of the compartment. "Padded seats, curtained windows, sliding doors—not as much space as in the Express, but I'm sure that has some Extension Charms built into the frame; I can't see how Slughorn could invite a dozen people into his compartment otherwise, even if we were all squeezed in together by the end. Did you know that the Third Class carriages only have wooden benches? They don't have any compartments, porters, or ashtrays."
Tom made a face. "The ashtrays make the upholstery smell like old cigarettes."
"Oh! I can fix that!" said Hermione brightly, shutting the compartment door and drawing the curtains closed, before she pulled her wand out of her pocket and cast a few cleaning and freshening charms on the seats. "I'd almost forgotten I can use magic now that I've had my birthday. It makes things so much simpler!" She paused for a moment, then added in an uncertain voice, "I ought to have put a Featherweight Charm on my trunk before the porter took it. I couldn't decide which books to bring, so I brought all of them, and the charm I used in the morning must have worn off. I think he almost put his back out trying to lift it..."
"Forget about him," said Tom, who hadn't even wanted to tip the Muggle porter when he knew he could have done the job himself with a silent Wingardium. "There are more important things to think about. For instance, will the Trace activate when magic is cast in a moving vehicle, or in the presence of an adult witch outside a wizarding residence?"
"Interesting questions," Hermione said, putting her wand away and plopping down into the seat. "I've been researching Ministry of Magic policy in the library, and the books I've read said that the Ministry detects and records all magical anomalies, but doesn't follow up on them unless it involves Muggle witnesses, students practising underage magic, or anything else that's blatantly illegal. If they weren't selective about who they pursued, they'd be sending owls around the country every hour of the day and night."
"Is it worth testing out?"
"Of course not!" Hermione exclaimed, glaring at him fiercely for even thinking about breaking the law.
"I've two strikes to spend before my birthday," said Tom, taking an opportunity to fully appreciate Magical Britain's tradition of excessive lenience. The rule of strikes was tantamount to every underage wizard being granted permission to break the law at whim, at the time and place of their choosing. The exemptions handed out by the negligent Ministry showed that they clearly didn't believe underage wizards were capable of anything greater than harmless joke jinxes.
(Tom could think of more than a few ways a well-placed Accio could cause major havoc in the right situation. Summon a sharp knife at the right speed, and the end result would be written off as an unfortunate accident and a case of Children Being Children.)
"You can't 'spend' them, Tom!" gasped Hermione, scandalised by his lack of concern. "They're official warnings, not... currency!"
"It seems a shame to have saved my strikes for an emergency, and not end up using them," Tom said. "It'd be an awful waste if it was all for nothing."
"A clean record isn't nothing," Hermione pointed out. "You might not be interested in applying for a Ministry job one day, but that doesn't mean your records disappear for good when you turn seventeen." She shook her head. "Can't you keep from doing magic until your birthday? It's less than two weeks away."
"You get to do magic and finish your homework," Tom said, "while I have to humour a bunch of Muggles. Mary Riddle keeps forwarding me letters through Dumbledore; I can tell she won't leave me alone as long as I'm living there."
"I think it's sweet," said Hermione stubbornly. "I'm sure you'll see that they're nicer people than you give them credit for—Mrs. Riddle invited me to stay for the holidays, after all."
"One day you'll admit that they're worse than you thought they were," said Tom. "And then I'll be the one to say, 'I told you so'."
"Well, I don't think that day will be today."
Tom could allow her those delusions for the time being. They were harmless delusions, so in the end, they were tolerable.
Hermione had always been persistent about her beliefs, and her (misplaced) sense of common decency had long been a barrier to acknowledging that sometimes people were worthless lumps of matter. This courtesy extended to people Hermione didn't even like, people that nobody liked. Leaving the Hogwarts Express, she'd given her farewells to the other boys—including Nott—while Tom hadn't bothered with it himself. But her politeness was different from making friends with them; greetings and farewells and How Do You Do's were not on the same level as wasting her time mucking about on the Quidditch pitch, or ogling painted harem girls with a group of lechers disguised as art appraisers.
He called them lechers, based on how the tone of casual dormitory conversation had devolved in the last year or so. The boys, purebloods all of them, were of the age where their parents were beginning to arrange matches for them, and being unhappy with their parents' tastes in future partners, they sought to indulge their own tastes in the limited means available to them. This meant late-night games of ranking all the girls in their year in order of their physical attributes, then debating which of the aforementioned attributes was the most attractive.
(No mention was made of intellect or magical aptitude, so it was easy for Tom to discount the tastes of his dorm mates as thoroughly plebeian. If this was the way the average wizard selected his spouse—when not placed under an artificial limitation of witches with suitable blood and fortune—it explained why the population of Magical Britain as a whole was so gullible and inept.)
Miles of farmland sped by as the train chugged northwards. The light, dimmed by the soggy clouds of winter, had bled out of the sky hours ago, leaving the view outside the windows as an impenetrable black void. While Hermione passed the hours writing in her datebook, and the conductor went around the First Class compartments inquiring if any passengers needed hot water bottles or lap blankets, Tom meditated. He catalogued his own feelings and practised the art of Occlumency, as Dumbledore had taught him. It gave him a measure of control over his emotions, the ability to subdue the raw edges of the anger and outrage that itched at his skin when his thoughts turned toward his family; it would let him interact with them without wanting to hold them at the point of his wand; it would let him be the Good Boy that they expected him to be.
What Hermione expected him to be.
He could be a Good Boy, if he wanted to be.
He could be anything he wanted to be.
As midnight approached, the night grew colder, and the inside of the train windows misted from the warmth of the carriage. He and Hermione brought out their Muggle coats when they reached the station in York, and were glad for it upon transferring to Great Hangleton, which was a minor country stop with two platforms. It was desolate, the station master's office the only light they could see, the platform itself icy and slick under their feet. It was colder than London; colder than Hogwarts too, where every morning he cast a warming charm on his uniform robes and winter cloak to last the whole day of classes.
"They were supposed to pick us up," said Hermione worriedly, turning back and forth as if she was expecting the Riddles to pop out from the nearest dustbin. "Do you see a motorcar?"
"If they don't show, we should go back to London," Tom suggested. "How much Muggle money do you have?"
"I'm sure they haven't forgotten," Hermione said, laying her trunk onto the concrete paving slabs then standing on top of it for an extra foot of height. She drew her wand from her pocket and cast a Lumos, lighting a bright circle around the two of them.
The honk of a horn shattered the frozen silence of a winter night; it was followed by the rattling growl of an approaching motorcar, which was preceded by a pair of yellow headlamps that cast a wide yellow arc of light on the black streets. Whitewalled tyres churned through patches of slush, throwing up a spray of icy pellets when the motorcar was brought to a stop right in front of the station entrance.
The headlamps dimmed and flickered, but remained on.
The driver's side door opened; a man stepped out onto the footpath, his arm reaching inside the motorcar for something on the front bench.
"Evenin'," he said, his walking stick tapping on the kerb. "I'm lookin' for a Master Riddle and Miss Granger."
"About time," Tom muttered.
"Good evening, sir," Hermione spoke over him, hopping off her trunk. "I'm Hermione Granger, and this is Tom. Have you been sent by the Riddles?"
"Frank Bryce," said the man, offering his hand to Hermione. Hermione shook it, and then he went to pick up her trunk with one hand, while his other hand continued to lean on his stick. "The Riddles' driver, groundskeeper, and man-of-all-work."
"Oh," said Hermione, bending over to help him, one hand behind her back still holding onto her wand, "let me get that!"
Frank Bryce was a young man in his twenties, and on top of that he was a servant; surely he didn't need any help doing the job he was paid to do: sort out their luggage and put it in the boot. The man looked perfectly fine, dressed in a rugged shooting coat over a thick knitted jumper and shirtsleeves, trousers tucked into a pair of wellies, and on his head was the standard flatcap that appeared to be an indispensable part of the Yorkshire working man's uniform. He didn't look like an invalid, and he hadn't asked for help. Tom thought it patronising of Hermione to volunteer her assistance, which came with the implicit suggestion that Bryce was incapable of doing the job the Riddles had hired him for, just because he had a gimp leg, or whatever it was that was wrong with him. Perhaps the Riddles had had to let their standards go due to the shortage of young men, most of whom would rather be soldiers than estate servants.
In the shadow of the headlamps, Bryce didn't notice Hermione tapping her wand against her trunk, then Tom's, applying a silent charm to reduce the weight. He hoped that Hermione had been careful enough not to charm the trunks to be weightless; there was bending rules when it was convenient, and then there was flouting the Statute, which was not far from giving up the game and ruining it for everyone else.
When their trunks were strapped to the boot, he and Hermione got into the passenger bench of the motorcar, and Frank returned to his seat behind the steering wheel.
"You'll tell me off for my permanent record," Tom whispered in Hermione's ear. "But you're the one doing the—" he took a second to think of an appropriate euphemism, "—the m-word in front of a You-Know-What!"
Hermione looked both ways before she returned, "Did you see his leg? A man his age—he's got to be a veteran, discharged for injury. The least I could do is help!"
"Yes, well," said Tom in a voice pitched too low to be overheard, "he didn't ask for help. Let him have some dignity."
"He wasn't going to ask for help." Hermione's jaw was set in stubbornness.
"You don't know that."
"I know men rarely ask for help," said Hermione, giving him a pointed look. "For some reason, they think their 'dignity' matters more."
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Tom replied, his expression one of curious incomprehension. "Are you still talking about him, or someone else?"
Hermione snorted, but she didn't argue the point.
By then, the motorcar had begun turning up the long, winding drive to the top of a broad slope, upon which was situated the great square lump of masonry and gabled roofs that was the Riddle House. The house was three storeys tall with an attic, the tallest structure for miles, and it dominated the local skyline, which Tom supposed was the purpose of his long-dead ancestors having chosen the site to build their house. As the motorcar crawled to the top of the hill, he could see the lights of the town a half-mile away; from the top floor window of the Riddle House, he expected he'd be able to see Great Hangleton, and on a clear day, perhaps the city of York in the distance as well—or at least the blur of smoke produced from thousands of households and dozens of factory furnaces.
Not long after, Bryce unloaded their luggage on the front steps of the house, before he got back into the driver's seat and circled the motor around the back of the house. Tom glanced at Hermione, fidgeting nervously next to him on the top step, then he lifted his finger to the doorbell and pressed the button.
A minute later, one half of the double-leafed front door swung open, revealing the face of a young woman in a sombre black dress and a lace-trimmed apron.
She studied Tom's features for a few seconds, the intrigued tilt to her head soon shifting to something that suggested she was well pleased with what she found.
"Oh," she said, her hand rising up to her mouth, twin patches of red emerging on her round, pockmarked cheeks when she appeared to have remembered her manners. "Oh! Mister Tom's son has come home at last!" She dipped down into a low and clumsy curtsy, which had obviously seen little practice.
"Leave your luggage there—Frank'll bring it in once he's locked up the motor for the night. I'm to show you to your room. Mr. and Mrs. Riddle had the North Wing done up for you special; they've already gone up, but you'll see them at breakfast in the mornin'. We serve the meals like so—" she babbled in a breathless voice, with nary a pause for breath. "Breakfast at nine, luncheon at one, afternoon tea at four, and supper at half-seven. You'll be expected to dress for it, o' course, but the rest of the meals are more casual-like." She appeared to notice Hermione's presence for the first time. "Err... And I s'pose that goes for you too, Miss—?"
"Granger," said Hermione, giving the woman a polite, if slightly frosty smile. "Hermione Granger, pleasure."
"Frances Crewe, senior housemaid," the maid answered, bobbing her head with much less deference than she'd given Tom. "Though we don't make a big to-do about titles on account of there's only me and Becky who work as maids here, and Sara thrice a week to help with the launderin'."
The maid showed them the way to the North Wing, explaining the layout of the house, which was built on a central line of symmetry as had been the fashion back then, and had two main mirrored wings around a square-shaped courtyard. The North Wing was where Tom's suite and Hermione's guest room were situated; the South Wing had the Riddles' living quarters, including Mr. and Mrs. Riddle's formal master suite and private sitting room, but they were off-limits. If assistance was required, he had a bell pull in his room which would summon a maid. She was eager to explain that the maids started at six in the morning and finished at ten at night, but if Tom needed anything, anything at all, then he just had to ring and someone would come over to help him.
Hermione scowled as the maid ingratiated herself to him, standing much too close to him for comfort. And then, to Tom's revulsion, she kept throwing hopeful glances in his direction, ignoring Hermione entirely, before Hermione was, without further ceremony, pointed to the room set aside for her. In plain contrast, the maid opened Tom's bedroom door and took the time to demonstrate the use of the fixtures in the attached bathroom, then the fully stocked writing desk, the fireplace, and the brand new wireless set over the mantle.
Tom's disturbance was magnified when the bookshelf by the desk contained all the Muggle books he'd kept in his wardrobe at Wool's: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Chemical Warfare Tactics of Ypres, 1812: La Campagne de Russie, The Principles of Political Philosophy, Skirmishes of the Second Boer War.
Mary Riddle had been inside his room at Wool's.
Not his room anymore—no doubt they had assigned it to some other orphan when they'd taken his things out of it—but it had been his for as long as he'd lived there, his when he'd had very little else he could say belonged solely to him. She'd have seen it, the creaky bedstead, the dingy window and the cracked paint, the collection of faded uniforms with frayed elbows and too-short hems. Was she disgusted by it? The display of poverty that had been his entire life up until he'd gone to Hogwarts; he himself was disgusted at the very thought of it—of his shabby, mean existence at the hands of Mrs. Cole, who called him a foundling, when he was in actuality no better than the commonest beggar...
Then, on the lowest shelf, sat a battered shoebox with dinged corners and peeling paper labels on the lid.
"I'm sorry, can this wait another day?" Tom said, cutting off the maid in the midst of her speech about special meal requirements to send to the cook. "I've been on trains all day, or transferring between trains, and I'm rather tired right now. And since it's past ten, you must be tired, too—I think you really ought to be putting up your feet, instead of attending to me. I wouldn't want to take advantage of your kindness, not when we've only just met."
He gave her a sincere smile, lowering his eyelids and softening the line of his brow to convey his exhaustion, and that was all it took.
The maid stammered something unimportant, and Tom didn't pay attention to it; he was glad to see the back of her when she shuffled off back to whichever cupboard or dusty pantry the Riddles used to store their servants when not in use.
He closed the door with a satisfying click of the latch... and then he lunged for the shoebox.
Under the various bits and bobs of orphanage detritus—a yo-yo, a thimble, a handful of grotty ha'pence, a commemorative coin that schoolchildren Britain-wide had been given at the coronation of George VI, a few scattered fountain pen parts—was a thick stack of letters he'd collected in the first few years of his mutual arrangement with Hermione Granger.
Peeling open the envelopes, he saw that the letters were there, inside and intact. Untouched. Still sorted by date, the paper still bearing a slight scent, the lines of her handwriting not as neat or refined as the way she wrote now, but it was recognisably hers. The address written on the front of each envelope was out-of-date, but her voice—Hermione's charmingly deluded opinions, her intractable arguments, her ridiculous visions of social progress—they were just as familiar, just as perfect, as he remembered them to be.
He read them over while lying in his new bed, and when he'd gone through half of them, he felt content enough to fall asleep in the midst of all this unfamiliar luxury.
That tentative illusion of peace lasted until breakfast the next morning, whereupon it was shattered for good, and his Christmas holiday, which Tom had not thought could get any worse, did.
That morning, Tom met his father for the first time.
It wasn't something that Tom thought the Riddles had planned. They were just as surprised and discomfited about it as he was, and some inner part of himself enjoyed gloating over their being forced to swallow a taste of their own medicine, in the dining room of their own house, no less. They must have known that the family reunion was an inevitability, but perhaps Mary and Thomas Riddle had wanted it to be a formal introduction, befitting of the standards to which they held their family. As much as it was possible to uphold these standards with Britain's present state as a war economy, as well as the collapse in standards surrounding the circumstances of Tom's birth.
That morning, he and Hermione had come downstairs to see place settings at the dining table, with silverware, crisp napkins, and a soft-boiled egg in a cup by each plate. Thomas Riddle sat at the head of the table, a tweed Norfolk jacket worn over starched tattersall and silk necktie. He perused the morning edition of the Yorkshire Post, while the maid from the evening before came around his left elbow and ladled egg scramble with chive garnish onto his plate.
Mary Riddle had on a twilled gabardine jacket and matched skirt, with a pair of pearls the size of his fingernail dangling from each of her earlobes. From her seat, she directed the maid about in serving the hot dishes from chafing dishes kept warm on the sideboard. By the number of platters, it seemed like the Riddles hadn't forgone any of their usual comforts due to the rationing. Milk, butter, cheese, eggs, ham—all that the housewives of London saved their tickets up and queued at the greengrocers' for were on casual display at the breakfast table.
Domestic was the right word to describe such a milieu.
It was so normal that Tom could scarcely reconcile himself to the notion of this being his life.
His impressions were reinforced when Hermione complimented Mrs. Riddle on the food, which led to Mrs. Riddle puffing herself up over her cook's skills; the cook was a former kitchen maid who'd accompanied Mrs. Riddle to Yorkshire upon her marriage to Mr. Riddle several decades ago, back in the old days when "inheriting" servants had been a common bridal gift. This insipid line of conversation was interrupted by a man at the dining room door, whose heavy footfalls and loud voice drowned out Mrs. Riddle's lacklustre attempts at self-effacement.
"Mother, I'm taking Diamond to the creek and back," said the man, going straight for the toast rack at the sideboard without greeting anyone at the table. "A clear day is too rare to pass up this time of year, and the dear gel hasn't been put through her paces in weeks. Don't expect me for luncheon—I'll have it down at the village."
He was dressed for riding in a swallow-tailed coat, jodhpurs, and polished boots; a riding crop and hat were tucked under one arm. Some people would have admired the dashing figure he cut in his well-tailored ensemble, but Tom's attention was drawn to the man's face, to the arrangement of familiar features that resembled his own so closely as to be near identical.
The man had a few extra inches in height over Tom, a more solid build with a greater breadth of shoulder, and a firmer shape to his chin, which had the slightest cleft where Tom's own chin was smooth. His skin bore the rosy tint of an active outdoors lifestyle, in contrast to Tom's porcelain pale complexion. But so many things were the same between the two of them, many more similarities than between himself and Thomas Riddle: the hair, thick and dark without any sweeping wings of grey; the elegant proportions of cheek, brow, and jaw. What unsettled Tom most was the man's voice. His accent was different, an immaculate Public School Standard lacking any traces of Tom's London origins—but the tone, range, and character were exactly the same as Tom's own voice. He recognised it intimately; he'd listened to his own voice hundreds of times from the sensory organs of the animals whose minds he'd entered.
Years ago, he'd consciously decided to hate Mrs. Helen Granger the first time he'd seen her from the window of his bedroom at Wool's, her fur coat and motorcar the most expensive things he'd ever seen anyone own. Now, without any conscious intention on his part, an instant loathing formed within him for this man—this spoiled overgrown brat who'd spoiled the lives of the people around him—who could be none other than his own flesh-and-blood father.
Tom pushed himself up from the table and addressed the man. "Good morning."
The man turned, a piece of toast in his mouth, just now noticing the inclusion of two strange guests at breakfast.
"Good mo—" he began, then his words choked to a stop. "You!"
Their eyes met, and this was one other mark of difference between them: Tom's eyes were darkest brown, while this man—his father—had eyes of hazel green, the sclera traced with bloodshot vessels all around where they'd widened in recognition—shock—terror—upon seeing his mirror image sitting on the opposite side of the table.
For an instant, a series of impressions flickered into Tom's mind, a confusing, non-linear stream of images and sensations: a dark room, the only light emitted from the thin join between door and floorboards; a soft and crooning voice, hands stroking his hair, fingers tracing down the line of his jaw, gentle kisses to his brow.
A parched throat, a tongue furred with thirst, and a glass of water on a tray that for some reason—he couldn't remember why; his memories blurred themselves into unintelligibility whenever he tried to cling onto them—he refused to drink it—wouldn't touch it—denied it to himself until the passing hours turned into an entire day, and in a moment of weakness, he couldn't help himself, and then it was too late to stop the veil from falling over his eyes—
Too late—
"You!" he repeated hoarsely, his riding crop gripped between white and shaking fingers. "I won't have you here—not here—Mother, Father, I told you I didn't want him!"
There was a clink! as the maid set the teapot down and tiptoed to the door.
"You will sit down and behave yourself," said Thomas Riddle coldly. He folded his newspaper and put it down to the side of his plate. "It's time you took responsibility for your actions."
"Mother," the man pleaded, turning to Mrs. Riddle and gazing at her imploringly, "please, please, I don't want him here—he can't live here—please, Mother, if you love me, send him away!"
Mrs. Riddle's eyes glistened, but she turned away from him and said, "You'll listen to your father, Tom. We're trying to do the right thing for our family, and the sooner you understand that, the better."
"That boy is not our family," said the other Tom Riddle, pointing a trembling finger across the table at Tom. "He's not mine; I won't acknowledge him—"
"It doesn't matter," said Mrs. Riddle, "we've already signed all the forms. We're his guardians, not you. It's out of your hands."
"Then have it your way," he snapped, and the plaintive whine in his voice was suddenly, jarringly, replaced by a tone of biting acid. He tossed his half-eaten piece of toast onto the platter of smoked kippers. "I wash my hands clean of this. Have Mrs. Willrow send my meals up on a tray—I shan't be sitting down for supper so long as he's here."
With that, he swivelled on his heel, coat-tails flapping, and marched out of the dining room, jamming his hat on his head. In the distance, a door slammed.
Tom sat back down in his seat, at a loss for words. His father had never been graced with his presence until today, but somehow, seeing the face of his long-lost son had triggered an instant flash of recognition. The man had been afraid of him. What did it mean? What had his father been thinking about, when Tom had peeked into his surface thoughts? The dark room, the empty glass; without context, he didn't understand any of it, and he was reminded of the incident last year when he'd looked into Nott's thoughts.
In the seat beside him, Hermione's face was pale and stricken, her fingers scrunching around the napkin in her lap.
"I had hoped that he would behave himself," Mrs. Riddle sighed.
"You know that he's always been a high-strung one. This is what comes of too much of your coddling, Mary." Thomas Riddle picked his newspaper back up, grumbling to himself, "If you hadn't tried so hard to set Cecilia on him, then perhaps he wouldn't have gone after that ghastly girl..."
When breakfast ended, they were finally able to excuse themselves. Hermione tried to make light of the situation by saying that she hadn't thought anything could be worse than the time the Riddles had had dinner with her family during the summer.
Tom, who often argued with her for the mere sake of arguing, couldn't disagree.
.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Credit goes to readers sunshine. katz and RMcD for proofreading and picking out the errors in past chapters. And thanks to all the readers and reviewers who have been following along from the start. This story broke the 200k milestone last chapter!