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Chapter Text

Wool’s Orphanage, London — December 31, 1937

The ceiling was cracked in thirty-seven places.

Tom knew because he had counted them. Many times. He counted them now, in the dark, the way other boys might count sheep or blessings or dreams. 

Tom had none of those. 

But he had the cracks, and the way the plaster peeled like dried skin at the edges, and the way watermarks bloomed brown and strange in the corners. They were faithful things, these ugly little constellations. Unchanging. Like him.

His room was dim. A threadbare sort of dark, thinned by a sickly amber light that bled in through the hallway, and the even fainter flicker that crept through the grime-smeared window. Outside, the streetlamp sputtered—like it, too, resented its duty.

The mattress beneath him was the kind you remembered in your bones rather than your dreams. It was thin, misshapen, its stuffing uneven and clumped from years of use. It smelled faintly of carbolic soap, sharp and metallic, the way the matron scoured everything until it stung.

She cleaned like she meant to erase them. As if the right chemicals could scrub the children clean of whatever made them unwanted.

The blanket might as well have been a suggestion.

Wool’s was cold in winter. Brutally so.

He had grown used to it, in the way children in places like this learned to stop noticing when they were uncomfortable. Or hungry. Or alone.

The matron said the furnace was temperamental.

Tom had looked that word up once, in the orphanage’s tattered copy of The Modern Junior Dictionary. Subject to sudden, unpredictable changes of mood.

He thought it described her just as well.

The matron had let them stay up to listen to the wireless. “New Year’s Eve,” she had said, as though the promise of a new calendar page might erase the grime of their lives. 

The wireless buzzed through cracked speakers, the kind that made music sound like insects. 

Laughter ricocheted down the hall like stones off concrete.

They were counting down the hall now. Loud, foolish voices echoing through the corridor.

“Ten! Nine!”

He wasn’t interested. Time was a trick of the light, anyway—one day folding into the next with the same grey inevitability. Midnight didn’t change anything but the number on the calendar.

“Eight! Seven!”

He hadn’t been allowed to stay up. He had been sent to bed without supper. Again.

Andrew Weller had tried to yank a book from his hands earlier. He was one of the older boys, broad-shouldered and mean in the way that most boys are when they know no one will stop them.

The book wasn’t even valuable—just a battered old thing about ancient civilizations, pages already loose in the spine.

Andrew had laughed when it tore, when Tom’s knuckles went white. He had called him a freak. A bastard. 

Andrew had pushed him first. So, Tom shoved him back. Hard enough to make his head snap against the bookshelf.

Andrew was twice Tom’s size. But that didn’t matter.

The matron hadn’t asked questions.

She’d never liked the look of him. He was too quiet. Too clever.

Children were meant to be soft and grateful.

Tom was neither.

Tom lay still, unmoving beneath the scratchy wool blanket. His hands were tucked beneath his back so he wouldn’t ball them into fists. So, he wouldn’t think about what it would feel like to set the matron on fire with his eyes. He had tried once. Concentrated so hard he gave himself a nosebleed. She hadn’t burned, but the tea kettle she was holding had burst. That had been satisfying.

The boys’ voices got louder.

“Six! Five!”

Tom turned his face toward the door. A sliver of light bled in from the hallway, gold and sour.

It touched the floor beside his bed but did not reach him.

“Four! Three!”

Tom closed his eyes.

“Two!”

His fingers flexed against the edge of the blanket.

“One!”

“Happy New Year!”

The world turned over again. Just like it always did.

The corridor erupted in cheers. Someone turned up the wireless and it crackled with garbled horns and tinny laughter. Tom looked back up at the ceiling. One crack. Two. Three. He began to count again.

Wool’s Orphanage – January 1st, 1938

Breakfast was the only good thing at Wool’s.

That, and the orphanage’s meager collection of books—most of them damaged, decades out of date, or printed with misaligned ink. Tom had read nearly all of them. Some more than a dozen times.

No one expected the boys at Wool’s to read, not really. They were expected to survive. To shuffle through government-run classrooms until they were old enough to disappear into factories or fields or war.

He had learned early that words meant power, and power meant answers. And if he could not be warm or wanted or safe, he would be certain.

Still, it was never enough. The more he read, the more he realized how little he knew. He could devour entire volumes and still feel starved. Knowledge came in fragments, and he hated that he could never seem to reach the end of it.

He joined the line with the others, hands in his coat pockets. The kitchen was loud with clattering plates and cheap utensils. Boys shoved and snatched at each other, fighting for nothing.

This morning’s meal was the usual fare—a thin slice of bread smeared with margarine that tasted faintly of metal, a scoop of watery oats, and if they were lucky, a single fried kipper that left grease prints on the plate. Food for the unwanted. Food for the forgotten.

Still, it was warm. And warm meant everything in winter.

Ms. Everly, the woman who worked the kitchen on holidays, leaned down over the counter as he passed. Her eyes flicked once to the left, then to the right. Her voice was a hush under the clang of trays.

“Happy belated birthday, Mr. Riddle,” she murmured, just loud enough for him to hear.

She didn’t wait for a response. Her hand moved quickly, sliding two small squares of chocolate to the edge of his tray, half-hidden beneath the metal bowl of porridge. Her eyes never left the food.

Every boy got chocolate on his birthday—cheap stuff cut with hazelnut. It was cheaper that way. But Tom never got any. He was allergic to hazelnuts. Deadly so.

Ms. Everly knew that, and despite the rising cost of proper chocolate, she always made sure he got the real thing.

Tom snatched them up quickly and slipped them into the right-hand pocket of his coat—the one without the hole in the lining. Then he checked behind him. No one had noticed. The others were too busy slapping trays and elbowing each other for better bread.

He moved quickly to his usual table, the one in the corner near the drafty window. It was colder there than the rest of the room. The others avoided it, but Tom didn’t mind.

Once, when he was younger, he used to save the seat beside him. Pretend someone might sit there—someone kind. Someone who liked books. Who might ask questions. Who might not look through him like he was something scraped off the bottom of a shoe. 

He didn’t do that anymore.

Now, he placed one of his books there instead. To keep anyone from thinking they were welcome.

The click of stubby heels on linoleum was enough to silence the room. Laughter, clatter, conversation—all of it died in an instant. 

The boys stood automatically, with their heads bowed and hands clasped behind their backs.

Tom followed, careful not to draw attention. It was best to keep still, to obey without eagerness. She didn’t like eagerness. She called it cheek and met it with the strap.

The matron had entered.

Her name was Matron Cole, though none of them dared say it unless asked. She was a stout, sour-faced woman, with a jaw like a bulldog and a voice like a snapped belt. Her stockings were always wrinkled, her perfume medicinal, and her temper ran hotter than the boiler that never worked. Her heels struck the floor like a gavel as she made her way to the front of the room.

Tom kept his gaze low, posture perfect. Eye contact was a gamble. If she caught you looking, she might take it as a challenge—or insolence. Either one earned you a backhand. Or worse.

Still, from the corner of his eye, he saw that she wasn’t alone.

Next to her stood a man—Mr. Fletcher who was a tall, stooped man with deep lines around his mouth and a thin, furious mustache. He wore a grey wool coat with leather patches on the elbows and always smelled of pipe smoke and boot polish. He was the local child welfare officer, and he only ever came for one of two reasons: a child was being removed… or one was being delivered.

He stood stiff as a lamppost, glancing over the rows of boys with mild disdain, like they were livestock, and he didn’t care for the breed.

The matron cleared her throat. It was a dry, brittle sound that silenced even the shuffling of shoes.

“You lot will listen,” she began, voice tight as a clothesline. “And you will do it with your mouths shut. I won’t be repeating myself.”

Tom didn’t doubt that.

She looked over them like a soldier surveying a pitiful battalion.

“This afternoon, at precisely noon, we will be receiving a new child.”

A pause.

“This child is a girl,” she continued, lips pursed like she’d swallowed something bitter.

A ripple of curiosity moved through the boys, silent but visible in the way a few heads lifted, and glances darted.

Mrs. Cole’s mouth thinned further.

“Yes. A girl. Don’t look so slack-jawed, you filthy lot. It is not your place to question decisions made by those with authority.”

She clasped her hands before her.

“As many of you know, Saint Margaret’s Home for Girls is no longer accepting placements. They’re overcrowded and underfunded—though not, I might add, lacking in standards. This particular child has been sent to us as a matter of necessity, not preference.”

“You will not leer. You will not pester,” Cole continued. “You will not so much as breathe near her unless spoken to directly. If I find any of you behaving like the mongrels you are, you will be punished severely. And if you’re wondering what I mean by severely, rest assured—I’ll enjoy demonstrating.”

Her eyes swept the room like bayonets.

“Do I make myself understood?”

A quiet, unanimous murmur followed. Yes, Matron.

Tom said nothing. He just stared straight ahead.

He knew the orphanage hadn’t housed girls in years, not since the incident. No one ever said what had happened, only that the wing on the east side of the building had been sealed before he arrived. A long hallway of bolted doors and empty beds, forbidden to the boys.

Some of the older boys were grinning, elbowing each other, making faces like the vermin they were.

Tom thought they were vile and utterly predictable.

To him, it didn’t matter whether it was a boy or a girl. This was just another person who wouldn’t understand him. Another mouth that would mock him. Another pair of hands that might try to take what was his.

He stared at the crack in the center tile on the floor and imagined it spreading.

For most of the morning, Tom had to endure the other boys’ chatter about the girl. They speculated like dogs scenting blood—snickering, nudging each other, offering guesses about what she would look like, how long she would last, how fast she would cry.

It was too cold to be sent outside, so they had been made to stay in the front hall. It was a wide room near the entry, where the walls peeled from damp and the radiators only worked when no one was near them. The boys were left to run wild in the space while the matron tended to whatever grim preparations were required for the new arrival.

Tom didn’t join them.

He sat cross-legged near the base of the stairwell, tucked into shadow with a book spread across his lap. The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles by Padraic Colum, he had read it six times. He was nearing his favorite part: the descent into the cave, where Jason faced the sleepless dragon alone, except for his mind and his will.

He felt his chest tighten in the thrilling way it sometimes did when the words pulled him in.

He was just reaching the last paragraph when something hit him in the shoulder.

A small wooden block skittered across the floor. Laughter followed.

“Oi, Riddle,” Billy said, his voice oily. “That book gonna teach you how to act normal? Always off in a corner, nose in the pages like some posh little prince.”

Tom’s fingers clenched the edge of his book until the spine creaked. Slowly, he looked up.

Billy Stubbs and Andrew Weller were standing a few feet away, smirking like wolves who had cornered a rabbit. Billy was thin and sharp-faced, eyes always too bright with cruelty. Andrew was broader—older, red-cheeked and stupid. They came in pairs. Cruelty made them brave.

“You think you’re better than us?” Andrew said, loud enough for the others to hear. “Always off by yourself, acting like you’re special.”

“He’s not special,” Billy cut in. “He’s just creepy. Talks weird. Stares too much. No wonder no one wants him.”

“Oi,” Andrew added, mockingly cheerful. “Boy genius. You listening to me, freak?”

Tom hated that word—freak—but he said nothing. Something inside him curled hot and tight.

“Say something,” Andrew jeered, stepping closer. “Or are you deaf too?”

Tom’s jaw locked. He didn’t understand the feeling exactly—but it was like static under his skin. Like pressure, ready to burst. A slow thrum beneath his flesh, electric and bright. His vision sharpened until the corners went soft and white. His breath came shallow and controlled.

“What’s the matter?” Andrew sneered. “Go on, do something. I dare you, freak.”

Andrew opened his mouth to say something else but then he was on the floor.

It was like someone had pulled the strings out from under him. He buckled and collapsed, groaning, hands clutching his stomach. A low, animal sound tore out of his throat as he curled in on himself, legs kicking, face twisting in pain.

Tom simply watched, his eyes locked on the boy writhing on the floor. He felt nothing but the distant hum in his fingertips, like a current slowly draining.

Billy scrambled back and the others were too frightened to help. Someone shouted Andrew’s name. One boy ran to fetch the matron.

Then shouting came down the hall, shattering the moment and the euphoric sensation vanished.

Andrew gasped, coughing, curling in like a dying insect.

Footsteps thundered down the corridor. Mrs. Cole burst into the hall, dragging another boy behind her. He was drenched—head to waist in dripping black ink.

“It was him!” The boy bellowed, jabbing a finger in Tom’s direction. “That freak did it! He set a trap!”

The matron stormed to him, red-faced and furious. She didn’t ask questions. She seized Tom by the ear with a vice grip and yanked him to his feet.

“What have I told you about causing trouble, Riddle?” she spat. “You think you’re clever? You think I don’t know what goes on behind that snake-eyed stare of yours?”

She dragged him all the way back to his room, shoved him inside, and slammed the door behind them. Ink had already begun to pool across the floor, bleeding into the cracks between the boards.

On the floor beneath the wardrobe lay the broken inkwell. It had been suspended by black mending thread, strung tight across the space above his mattress. One tug or one shift of weight, and it dropped. Directly over the bed.

It was crude, but effective.

It had worked. Perfectly.

He had placed it that morning. Because he knew the boys would go through his things. That they would search for his chocolate. Or worse—the other item he kept hidden, the one he would never allow anyone to touch.

“You are a menace,” she snapped, stabbing a finger at his chest. “You think I don’t see what you are? Clean it. All of it. Before the girl arrives. Or I’ll make sure Mr. Fletcher puts you where you belong—with the criminals.”

She sniffed once, sharp and mean.

“One day, someone will put you in your place. And I hope I live to see it.”

And then the door slammed shut behind her, leaving Tom alone in the ink-stained room.

Tom had finished cleaning long before she returned.

He had scrubbed the ink from the floor with a torn rag and a basin of cold water. His mattress still bore the worst of it—a large, sun-shaped stain that no amount of scrubbing would remove—but he had straightened the sheet over it, neat and smooth, as if that would make a difference.

The matron unlocked the door with a jangle of keys and three sharp knocks against the heavy door. It wasn’t a summons so much as a warning—fall in line, no mistakes. He straightened his collar, smoothed his sleeves, and made his way to the entrance hall.

The boys were already lined up, backs rigid, hands behind them, eyes front. They wore what passed for uniforms at Wool’s—grey coats, old shoes, patched trousers in near-matching shades. They stood in rows, youngest in front, tallest toward the back. Tom took his usual place at the end.

He was only eleven, but tall for his age. Tall enough to see over most of the others. He didn’t shift or fidget like they did. He simply stood still, as the matron paced the line like an officer inspecting troops.

It always reminded him of an army.

Obedience masquerading as order.

Mrs. Cole gave them one final glance, lips pursed, then turned toward the door. “They’re here.”

The entrance opened with a heavy groan of hinges, and two men stepped inside—officials from the placement bureau. Grey suits, paper files tucked under their arms, the cold trailed after them, bitter as the silence.

And behind them came the girl.

She looked like something golden—like light breaking through a boarded window. She stood on the threshold of that hall like she didn’t belong in it.

She was small. No older than ten. Her curls were thick and wild, framing her face like a lion’s mane. She wore a pale dress with a cardigan buttoned tight to her throat, and her shoes were clean. She did not look like someone unwanted.

No, Tom thought. This girl had been loved.

She wasn’t underfed like the rest of them. Her cheeks were round, her skin still held the kind of warmth that hadn’t yet burned off. Her hands were clenched in front of her, but there was no dirt beneath her fingernails. She had been cared for. Maybe not by family still alive — but certainly by someone.

A tragedy, then. A car crash or fire. Something sudden. Perhaps something brutal.

But it didn’t matter. She had not come from squalor. She didn’t wear the look of it.

He studied her carefully, the way he studied everything. She looked down, shoulders squared in the way children do when they’ve been told to be brave.

One of the men nudged her gently forward. The matron bent low, voice honeyed in a way it never was for the boys.

“It’s all right now,” she murmured. “We’ll take good care of you here.”

The girl nodded once.

Tom watched her fingers twist in the hem of her coat.

The matron straightened and turned to face the line.

“You will come forward one at a time and introduce yourselves. You will not gawk. You will not speak out of turn. And if I hear so much as a snicker, I will have your supper bowls cleared before the bread hits the tray.”

Her tone had the weight of threat wrapped in clipped civility.

One by one, they did as they were told, each offering their name, a half-bow, a mumbled hello. The girl murmured a quiet reply to each of them. 

Tom was last.

He stepped forward, hands folded behind his back.

“Aurelia Wells,” she said softly.

There was a careful dignity in the way she said it. Like a name she had been told to remember but hadn’t always used.

It sounded like a name from a different story. One that had sunlight in it.

Her eyes met his then. Wide and brown and too large for her face.

There was something in them—something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Not fear. Not innocence.

There was pain there. Something buried but not yet erased.

Tom inclined his head.

“Tom Riddle.”

Chapter Text

Wool’s Orphanage — February 1938

Tom sat stiff-backed in a creaking wooden chair, the desk in front of him worn smooth by decades of bored, ink-stained hands. The blackboard was cracked at the corners and coated in a thin film of chalk dust; the air smelled of varnish, paper mold, and discipline.

Before him, the daily exercise: a list of moral proverbs to be copied in full, over and over, to improve both penmanship and character.

Cleanliness is next to godliness.

Obedience is the first duty of a child.

Hard work brings reward.

Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

Spare the rod, spoil the child. 

Tom’s lips curled, just barely. Godliness, obedience—words meant to pacify. To keep children docile. He knew better. Cleanliness was the mark of control, not virtue. Idleness did not breed evil; it bred thought. Obedience was not a duty—it was a leash.

And hard work?

He had watched boys scrub floors until their fingers bled. Watched girls sent off to laundry houses that paid in bruises. Watched the kitchen woman, who never smiled, sleep standing up beside the coal bin. None of them had found reward. Just more of the same.

Hard work brought sweat, hunger and discipline. It brought lowered eyes and aching spines. Not reward. Never reward.

He dipped his pen carefully into the inkwell, the black pooling at the nib. He began his next line.

“Obedien—”

A sharp crack split the air. The ruler struck hard across the back of his hand.

His wrist jerked, the nib dragging ink in a wild slash across the page. A few of the boys snickered—the dull kind of laughter that comes easily to people with nothing in their heads. Tom didn’t look at them. He looked only at his page, at the ink bloom spreading like a wound through his work.

Miss Blythe stood behind him, her mouth pinched, her eyes gleaming with that special contempt she seemed to reserve just for him.

“Left hand again, Mr. Riddle?” Her voice curled through the air like vinegar. 

She brandished the pen between two fingers, as if it carried disease. 

“How many times must we correct this devilry?”

She shoved the pen into his right hand, her grip dry and iron-strong. Her knuckles were red, her nails bitten to the quick. Her eyes never quite blinked at the same time.

“God gave you a proper hand. Use it.” she said. “Or I’ll have your fingers bound by lunch. Understood?”

Tom didn’t answer. 

Miss Blythe moved on, shoes thudding dully across the warped floorboards. 

Tom switched the pen back to his left hand and dipped the nib once more. A single drop of ink fell onto the paper when he felt someone staring at him. 

His eyes slid sideways.

Aurelia Wells sat one desk away, eyes like cinders fixed on him. Her chin rested on her hand. Today, her curls were pinned back, the light catching at the ends like copper.

Tom looked at her, not with a sneer, but with the kind of silence that warned more than words.

She dropped her gaze back to her paper.

It had been a month since she arrived, and in that time, Aurelia Wells had become something of a marvel. The Matron adored her. The staff lit up when she entered a room. Even the boys, crude and cruel as they could be, kept their distance—not out of kindness, but because they sensed the rules were different when it came to her. She was untouchable. A golden thing in a place built to tarnish.

Yet despite all of this—despite the careful smiles and admiration—she remained apart.

She spoke to no one. Not really. Shared no secrets, joined no games. She was polite, always. Kind, even. But she kept to herself.

And, to Tom’s surprise, to books.

She read nearly as much as he did—sometimes in the corner of the library, other times curled near a window in the main hall, always quiet, always turning the pages with a steady hand. 

In class, she was bored. Not like the others—fidgeting, slouching, glassy-eyed—but in the way he was. The way that suggested she already knew the answers. Like the material was beneath her. 

She’d had a real education, or she was smart enough to have built one herself.

She came from something, that much was clear. Nice clothes. Straight teeth. No bruises when she arrived. She had been wanted once, that much was undeniable.

Which only deepened the question that had been pressing at the back of his mind since she had stepped through the doors of Wool’s:

Why was a girl like that left here, among the unwanted?

He didn’t care. Other people were distractions. Puzzles with no prize at the end. Books offered more. 

Books had answers. People only ever had questions.

He returned his gaze to the page.

The black ink had dried across the line about obedience, curling like a crack through the phrase. 

He didn’t bother blotting it. 

It made more sense that way.

Aurelia had finished her work before him. Again.

He had always been the first. Always. Miss Blythe never praised him for it, but the silence of being better than the rest had its own kind of pleasure. But since she arrived, that silence had been shared. She had taken a space in it quietly, without asking and that unsettled him.

Tom didn’t like how this made him feel.

When Miss Blythe dismissed the class with her usual bark and sing-song condescension, Tom stood quickly. He gathered his book and was the first into the corridor.

Soft footsteps fell in beside him. He didn’t need to look. He knew it was her.

She smelled faintly of rose soap and something warm, like cinnamon or sunshine. It was infuriating. What could she possibly want?

They walked side by side in silence. 

She tucked a curl behind her ear. The motion caught in his peripheral vision—a nervous gesture, not a vain one. He didn’t look at her. But he noticed the way she stared straight ahead, lips pursed like she was preparing for something.

As they began to climb the stairs, she finally spoke.

“You’re left-handed,” she said plainly.

Tom didn’t respond.

“It’s not bad, you know,” she continued, voice light but factual, like she was answering a question no one had asked. “It used to be discouraged in schools. Teachers would tie children’s hands behind their backs and force them to write with the right one. But it’s not unnatural.”

Tom kept walking.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t want her sympathy. He didn’t want her facts. He didn’t want her scent or her voice or her well-meaning nonsense trailing him through these halls like she belonged here.

She went on. 

“I read in The Child’s Guide to Natural Philosophy that left-handed people tend to have stronger pattern recognition. You probably process patterns faster. Spatial tasks too. Studies have shown that left-handed people tend to be more creative—sometimes more analytical. That’s not a bad thing. And there’s no actual link between handedness and deviance. That part’s just superstition. Some people are simply born that way. It’s perfectly normal. Not that Miss Blythe would care—”

Tom stopped walking.

“Normal,” he said flatly. “As if you would know whether I’m normal or not.”

There was no accusation in his voice—just a flat, empty curiosity. Like he was studying a fly he might pull the wings off of.

“No,” she admitted, blinking up at him. “But I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about handedness. And I don’t think it was very nice of the other boys to laugh. Or Miss Blythe to treat you like you were defective.”

Her tone wasn’t comforting. It was clinical. Like she was reciting something she had read in a book and thought needed correcting.

Tom started walking again. She followed.

Undeterred, she began again. “Leonardo da Vinci was left-handed. So was Einstein—”

Aurelia was still talking, still trailing him like someone who hadn’t yet been taught the futility of kindness.

“—But the association with the devil is mostly linguistic,” she added. “The Latin word sinistra means ‘left’ but also came to mean ‘evil’ or ‘unlucky’ in some cultures, especially in the Middle Ages. And anyway, the brain’s hemispheres aren’t even—”

He stopped at the door and turned slowly, eyes locking on hers.

“You have no idea what I am.”

Then he stepped inside and shut the door in her face.

Inside, the silence wrapped around him like cold water. Tom stood motionless, back against the door, fingers clenched around the knob.

The girl had no idea what she was talking about.

Left-handed or not, no one at Wool’s thought he was normal. Not the matron. Not the boys. Not the teachers. Not even him.

And if she stayed long enough, she would see it too.

They always did.

Tom slipped out of the lunchroom early.

The clatter of spoons and the dull thrum of boyish laughter faded as he moved down the narrow corridor toward the west wing—the one with the classrooms and the library. If anyone stopped him, he would say he was fetching a book. It was believable. Books, after all, were the only things anyone trusted him with.

He passed the library door without pausing and turned the brass handle of the supply closet just beyond. The hinges moaned, but not loud enough to draw attention.

Inside, it was cramped. Shelves lined with slates and blunt nibs. The inkwells sat tucked in the corner, half-hidden behind a rusted tea tin. He slipped one into the inner pocket of his coat, then stepped quietly back into the corridor.

He had just shut the door behind him when a voice cracked through the air.

“Riddle.”

The voice landed like ice down his spine.

Matron Cole’s voice cut like wire. Tom turned, slowly. She loomed behind him, her scowl already formed.

“What are you doing skulking around up here?” she demanded, stopping a few feet away. “Why aren’t you in the cafeteria like the rest of them?”

Tom said nothing for a second too long.

“Well?” she snapped.

Tom dropped his gaze and picked at the frayed edge of his sleeve. “I was just headed to the library.”

“Lying again, are we?” she said, voice rising. “Turn out your pockets.”

Tom slowly reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the inkwell.

Mrs. Cole snatched it from his hand like it was proof of treason.

“Another inkwell,” she hissed. “What did I tell you? You’re not to make another one of your little traps, Riddle. You think I don’t know what you’re up to? Sneaking and scheming and thinking you’re clever. But you’re not. You’re just a nasty little boy with too much time and not enough obedience.”

She grabbed the back of his jacket, shaking it once for emphasis.

“Tom?”

The interruption came like a gust of wind through a cracked window.

Tom and the matron both turned to see Aurelia stepping out from the library, a book cradled in one arm.

“Oh, there you are,” she said, blinking innocently. “Did you find it?”

Then turned to the matron. “Oh—hello, Mrs. Cole.”

Mrs. Cole narrowed her eyes.

Aurelia gestured toward the inkwell. “I asked Tom to get one. The library’s bottle is dried up. I needed it for my copywork exercises.”

Her voice was calm. Bright. Like she wasn’t lying.

The matron narrowed her eyes at the girl, then back at Tom. Her fingers uncurled from his jacket slowly, like she had just realized she was strangling the wrong child.

“You needed the inkwell,” she repeated slowly.

There was a long pause.

Mrs. Cole’s eyes moved between them. She didn’t believe her, not really—but it gave her a way out that didn’t involve hauling Tom by the ear back to his room.

Then the matron exhaled through her nose. 

“Well then,” she muttered at last, tone sour. “If the two of you are so eager to roam the halls during lunch, you can spend your evening scrubbing them. Both of you.”

Aurelia nodded immediately. “Yes, Matron.”

Tom said nothing.

The matron gave him one last look of distaste before turning on her heel and vanishing back toward the lunchroom.

Silence returned.

Tom stared at Aurelia. He didn’t understand.

He wasn’t used to being interrupted. And he certainly wasn’t used to being spared. The usual punishment would have meant no supper for days. Scrubbing the floors was nothing.

“You lied,” he said finally. 

“So did you,” she replied, stepping closer to the library door, “and you’re a terrible liar.”

“What does it matter?”

“It matters,” she said, “if you ever want to be believed next time.”

He glanced at her, frowning. “You think I care about that?”

“You should, if you want to be good at it,” she said. “If you’re going to lie, at least make it believable.”

Tom watched her. Silent.

Aurelia tilted her head. “Why traps, anyway?”

Tom’s jaw tightened. He hadn’t expected her to hear that part. He didn’t answer right away. Just leaned back against the wall and stared straight ahead.

“They steal from me,” he said finally. “The other boys. Nothing’s ever really yours here.”

She turned slightly in the doorway, silhouetted in light. Her voice was soft.

“Well. If you don’t want people taking your things… you should probably get better at hiding them.”

Her voice was soft when she spoke, but something in the way she said it lodged deep inside him. Settling beneath his skin like a splinter.

He felt his skin prickle in a way he couldn’t explain. She spoke like she knew exactly how the world worked, how powerworked, how secrets needed faces. The kind of knowing that didn’t come from books, but from survival.

And she smiled at him. Like she wasn’t afraid of him. Like she knew something he didn’t.

Tom didn’t understand it. And he didn’t like not understanding.

Then she turned, disappearing into the light spilling from the library doorway.

Leaving Tom standing in the corridor, staring at the empty space where she had been. 

It was February, but the cold had eased for a day. The sky was the color of old linen, pale and thin, and the sun filtered weakly through the bare-limbed trees that bordered the courtyard. The air still held its winter bite, but it was tolerable enough that the matron had ordered them outside. 

The courtyard stones were still damp in patches, but Tom sat on his usual bench anyway, a worn volume balanced across his knees.

He was reading Myth and Memory: Ancient Civilizations and Their Gods—a battered copy pulled from the library shelf last month, already read twice, but worth a third. It wasn’t fiction. It was better. Full of power passed off as story. Deities who moved mountains with words. Men who claimed godhood through control.

Across the yard, the other boys were hurling rocks over the brick fence, trying to clear the top. The sharp clink of stone on stone grated against his nerves. Each clang a reminder of how little they valued silence. Or thought.

Tom turned a page slowly, trying to ignore them.

He had just reached a passage on names being carved into tomb walls—how the ancient’s believed forgetting was the second death—when a shadow fell across the page.

Aurelia Wells sat beside him without a word. She folded her skirt under her knees and looked down at the book in his lap.

“I’ve been meaning to read that one,” she said, swinging her legs, which didn’t quite reach the ground. “The chapter on Egyptian burial rites is supposed to be fascinating. Did you get to that part yet?”

Tom didn’t answer.

She kept going.

“I read something once about how they believed you had to speak a name to keep a soul alive in the afterlife. That’s why they carved everything into tomb walls. So people would remember. Isn’t that interesting?”

Tom shut the book with a snap.

He stood without looking at her, tucking the volume under his arm, and turned toward the building. His stride was brisk and purposeful. He didn’t need this. He didn’t want her voice cluttering the space he had carved out for himself.

But she followed him. Of course she did.

She scrambled to keep up as he crossed the courtyard. Her shoes clicked lightly on the stones as she hurried to keep pace.

She kept talking as though he hadn’t left, like the momentum of her thoughts couldn’t be stopped just because he was ignoring them.

“I just think it’s clever,” she said, still trailing him. “That idea of remembering someone into permanence. I mean, names having that kind of power. Imagine what it means to erase one.”

Her voice continued behind him. “Do you think memory can make something real? Or does it just make it matter?”

He stopped so abruptly she nearly collided with him. Then he turned to face her fully.

“Do you ever stop talking?” he said coldly.

“Do you ever stop being so insufferably grim?” she replied, arching an eyebrow. “It’s a beautiful day. You could at least pretend to be happy.”

Tom only stared at her. He couldn’t believe how insufferable this girl had become—how persistent, how utterly unshakable. She talked like she had nothing to fear. And worse, she looked at him like she saw something worth understanding. That part grated most of all. He didn’t want to be understood. He wanted to be left alone.

She went on, undeterred, crossing her arms. “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to have a proper conversation. Most people learn by engaging with others.”

He scowled. “You think that makes us friends? It doesn’t. You lied to the matron—fine. But don’t mistake that for anything else. I don’t need your help. I don’t need your facts. I don’t need you.”

He turned again, storming toward the door. The corridor ahead was dim, swallowing sunlight like a closing throat.

She didn’t follow this time.

Before he stepped through it, her voice called after him.

“Don’t be so sure about that.”

Tom paused at the threshold. He didn’t turn around. But something in her tone stuck like a thorn in the back of his mind.

It was after dinner, and the hallways had turned quiet, the way they always did after the plates were cleared and the boys were marched off for nightly prayers or chores. Tom moved down the stairs slowly, dreading the scene he was walking into.

He had spent most of the meal dreading this—her—and the punishment that tied them together like two threads knotted against their will.

By the time he stepped into the front hall, the sky had turned the color of bruised steel, and the last of the weak winter light filtered through the frosted windows.

Mrs. Cole was already waiting, arms folded tight, keys jangling at her waist. Beside her stood the girl, hands clasped in front of her like she had been summoned to confession. She wore trousers and a pale blue jumper, sleeves neatly rolled. The outfit looked wrong here, like she had been painted into the wrong frame.

Mrs. Cole gave him a long look before speaking.

“You know where the buckets are, Riddle. The soap, the brushes. I expect to see this floor shining. Not a single muddy footprint left by the time I return.”

Her gaze lingered on Tom. One last scowl. Then she turned on her heel and marched away, shoes clicking like gunfire down the corridor.

Tom didn’t look at the girl. He turned and walked toward the supply closet down the hall.

The cleaning gear hadn’t changed in years. Tin buckets dented at the corners. Stiff-bristled brushes with wooden handles. A box of coarse cotton rags that had once been shirts. A jug of old-fashioned carbolic soap sat beside the sink, its red slivers pungent enough to sting the eyes.

He filled one bucket with cold water from the tap, broke a piece of soap into it, and stirred it with his hand until the water turned cloudy. Then he filled a second bucket, pulled one of the better rags from the box, and handed them to her without meeting her eye.

She took them without looking at him either.

They knelt opposite each other on the cheap tiled floor. Mud and salt from weeks of winter boots had turned the entranceway into a grimy mosaic of brown streaks and ash-gray crust.

The cold seeped in quickly. Aurelia had tucked one knee under her as she scrubbed furiously at a scuffed corner near the baseboard.

She didn’t speak. For once.

But eventually—

“Can I use your brush?” she asked quietly.

She gestured toward the stiffer bristle one he was using to loosen a stubborn bit of grime.

Tom extended his arm, offering it.

Her hand bumped the edge of his bucket, knocking it over. Cold, soapy water sloshed out, soaking the knees of his trousers and pooling in a dark puddle beneath him.

Aurelia froze, hand to her mouth. “Oh—sorry, I—”

Before she could finish, he rose, water dripping from his clothes. He dropped his rag with a sharp flick of his wrist, then turned and kicked her bucket. Successfully tipping it over. The water soaked her from the waist down.

She looked at him, mouth open in disbelief.

And then she laughed.

A real laugh—bright and full, bursting out of her like she couldn’t stop it. Loud and unrestrained and sudden, like the sound had been trapped inside her for weeks and had finally broken loose. She laughed until her shoulders shook, until her face lit up like the sun had finally found her in this miserable place.

Tom stood frozen.

He had never heard anyone laugh like that. Not here. Not in Wool’s, where the air was stale and heavy and joy came rarely, if at all.

A smile tugged at his mouth before he could stop it.

Just for her—wet and ridiculous and shining like she didn’t know this place was meant to crush the light out of people.

She scooped a handful of soapy water off the floor and flicked it toward him.

He stepped back, startled.

Then retaliated.

He returned the favor, faster and more direct, and she squealed, ducking behind her arms.

For a few minutes, the entrance hall sounded like it belonged to another world entirely.

And Tom—who never played, never joked, never believed in childish things—forgot himself.

Just a little. And for the first time in years, he didn’t mind.

Not at all.

The laughter had faded into silence, and they sat on the scrubbed floor, the watery remnants of their mess puddling around them. His cheeks hurt from smiling. It felt foreign, like a muscle unused.

Across from him, Aurelia watched him with something soft in her eyes, curls damp at the ends, sweater clinging to her arms.

“Why do you push people away?” she asked gently. “I like you better like this.”

The question hung in the air like a fragile thing.

Tom blinked, caught off guard. “Like what?”

“Like you were just now.”

He looked down at his knees, at the way the soapy water had turned gray with dirt. He didn’t know why but he felt like he could trust her. The thought unsettled him.

Still, the urge rose. Like something buried too long finally pressing against the surface, demanding air.

“I’m not a good person.”

She listened without interrupting, her expression steady and open.

“The other children here think I’m a freak,” he went on. “They’re not wrong. I’ve always been able to do things—things no one else can.”

He stopped there, the silence pulling tight around them. It was almost like the words had come too easily. Like he already wished he hadn’t said them.

She tilted her head slightly. “What kind of things?”

His eyes flicked to hers, searching.

He didn’t answer right away.

“What do you know about Merlin?” he asked.

A light flickered behind her gaze. “Geoffrey of Monmouth writes about him in Historia Regum Britanniae. There’s a later collection—Les Prophéties de Merlin—that says he was born of a mortal woman and a magical father. Supposedly the most powerful sorcerer of his age.”

Tom watched her. “So you believe he was real?”

“I think there’s truth buried in most legends,” she said. “And I think people fear what they can’t explain. So, they turn power into myth.” She paused, her voice gentler. “Do you believe you’re like him? A wizard?”

He could see it. She understood.

Tom stared at her, fascination creeping into his expression like light filtering through a crack.

“I can make animals do what I want,” he said, voice hollow and matter-of-fact. “I can make things move without touching them.”

He paused, flexing his hand slightly. “I can hurt people.”

Then he met her eyes. “If I want to.”

Aurelia studied him with that same calm, the quiet strength that somehow didn’t shrink away from the truth of him.

“I already knew you were magical,” she said.

His head jerked up. “How could you know that?”

She shrugged lightly, pushing a wet curl off her shoulder. “Because… I am too.”

Tom stared at her like she had just rewritten the sky.

“My magic could sense yours,” she added. “I can’t explain it, not really—but it’s like a sixth sense. Like smell. Or taste. I could feel it coming off you the second we met.”

A sharp thrill of excitement moved through him, edged with disbelief. Someone else could do what he could. After all this time, he wasn’t alone.

“How do you know so much about it?” he asked.

“I grew up around both magical and Muggle people,” she said. “After a while, you just start to feel the difference. It’s hard to explain. It’s like instinct.”

“Muggle?” he echoed.

“Non-magical people,” she clarified. “Most of the world, really.”

That word echoed in his head. Muggles. A name for the blank, dull world beyond what he was.

He had spent hours in silence, wondering about his mother. The woman who had died giving birth to him. If she had been magical—if she had been powerful—surely she wouldn’t have died so easily. Maybe she had been a muggle. Maybe that was why she was gone.

Weak. Like the rest of them.

He looked at Aurelia again. Damp curls clinging to her cheek, face bright even in the dim light. Magic, he realized, could look like her too. Warm. Golden. Light not made of fire, but something gentler.

“Mine manifested when I was young too,” Aurelia said quietly. “I’ve always known I was different. Even as a child. Especially then, actually.”

She pulled her knees to her chest, arms wrapped loosely around them.

“I went to school in Novosibirsk. The other girls hated me,” she continued. “They use to call me a freak too. A know-it-all and said my teeth were too big. It was like they could sense I wasn’t… normal. And when I got angry, well—things would happen.”

She gave him a sly look, like a secret passed across the floor between them.

“When I got angry, things happened. One girl’s skirt went up in flames. Another couldn’t speak for three whole days.” 

She added, “Little things, too. When I was happy, flowers would bloom in winter. My toys danced on their own. If I was really excited, the lights would flicker. My nanny once took away my pink stuffed bunny, and my hair sparked with static until she gave it back.”

A flicker of amusement passed through her eyes. “She quit that night.”

Wealth, then. A nanny. A private school. Tom felt his curiosity gnawing at him again.

Her laugh was light, but Tom could see the careful sadness behind it.

“But… when I was old enough my mom told me about magic.” 

“Were they magical—your parents?” he asked.

Her smile faltered. She nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“What happened to them?”

Aurelia looked down at her fingers, picking at the edge of her nail. She didn’t meet his eyes.

“My father was never really in the picture,” she said. “He left when I was little. I don’t remember him.”

She looked distant now.

Tom’s jaw clenched. Rage stirred low in his chest. His own father had left too—left his mother to die alone. The matron had used that fact like a weapon for years. 

The comparison burned.

“But my mother was a good mum,” Aurelia said softly. “She used to sing to me while she braided my hair at night—always off-key, but she didn’t care. On Sundays, she would make cinnamon toast and bring it to me in bed, just because she knew it was my favorite. She was clever, too. Loved books almost as much as I did. Some nights we would stay up reading together, even if I’d already memorized the ending.”

She gave a shaky smile. “We lived in a Muggle village, far from the magical world. She always said we had to stay hidden and that there was a man out there who was power-hungry and dangerous. She called him evil.”

Tom’s brows pulled together. “Who?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. She was too afraid to even say his name.”

The air around them felt colder, like a door had opened somewhere unseen.

“Then one morning, before the sun was up, she shook me awake and said we had to leave. There wasn’t time to grab anything. I barely managed to snatch my stuffed bunny. My bag was already packed. As we were leaving, I saw my nanny lying unconscious on the floor. I wanted to go back for her… but my mum wouldn’t let me. She just pulled me to the door, and we left. We got into a car and drove out of Blagoveshchensk—”

Tom startled at the name, remembering that it was on the Russian border. Far east.

“—and drove for hours before taking a portkey to London. When we arrived… she hugged me so tight I couldn’t breathe. She said she would see me again soon. I didn’t understand. I thought she was coming with me.”

Tom couldn’t help wondering what a Portkey was.

She swallowed hard.

“Then there was red light. And the next thing I knew, I was waking up in custody. Being told I was going to a place called Wool’s.”

She wiped at her eyes with her sleeve, giving him a watery smile. “Some arrival, right?”

Tom didn’t know how to comfort people. That wasn’t something they taught at Wool’s. But he figured letting her talk was the closest thing he could do.

“What about you?” she asked. “Your parents?”

“My mother died when I was born,” he said simply. “And I never knew my father.”

Aurelia gave him a sideways glance, then grinned. “So we’re both fatherless freaks, huh?”

He actually smiled. Just barely.

Then, wordlessly, she lifted her hand over the shallow pool of water between them. Tom watched in silence as the liquid trembled, gathered, and rose. It floated just above her palm, coalescing into a perfect globe. She cupped it in both hands, then spun it lazily with her fingertips. Droplets slipped away like tiny stars.

Tom watched her, mesmerized.

She flicked a droplet at him, and he flicked one back. Their laughter mingled, echoing in the hall like sunlight breaking through winter.

“You ever get that feeling,” she said, “like your magic wants to break out of you when you’re happy? Like it’s tingling at your fingertips, just waiting to be released?”

Tom nodded, though the truth felt different inside him. His magic didn’t feel like that. Not joy. Never joy. He only ever felt it when he was angry. When the pressure built so tightly it had to release. His magic came like a fire—violent and dark.

She went on. “Most witches and wizards need a wand to shape magic. It helps channel it and gives it direction. But if you’re strong enough… and you practice… you can do it without one. It’s called wandless magic. Just clear your thoughts and focus where the lightning moves in your bones.”

She turned her palms up, still holding the ball of water aloft.

“Try it. Put your hands out and focus on what you want.”

He hesitated, then copied her. He placed his palms up and breathed slowly.

Nothing happened at first.

Then he thought of Miss Blythe. Her sour face. Her slaps. The time she locked him in the root cellar. He thought of Billy Stubbs and the other boys. Their laughter. Their kicks. The way they called him names.

He felt it stir.

Like something waking in his chest, crawling down his arms.

A small, bright fire curled to life in the center of his palm. It wildly licked the air. 

Aurelia’s mouth fell open. “Tom…”

She moved fast, hurling the water sphere at him. It hit with a loud splash, soaking his front and extinguishing the flame in a hiss of steam.

He stared at her, stunned—and now even more soaked than before.

She burst into laughter. Loud and golden.

And for a second time that night, the walls of Wool’s fell away. The hallway belonged to them alone.

To a boy who didn’t know how to be kind, and a girl who had already forgiven him.

Chapter Text

Wool’s Orphanage — March 1938

It was Sunday morning, which meant the children of Wool’s were packed into the narrow pews of Saint Ives Chapel—an old, crumbling thing bolted onto the orphanage like an afterthought. Dust filtered through the stained-glass windows in golden shafts, making the saints look like they were weeping light.

A man stood at the front, reciting scripture like law. He spoke of grace, of sin, of eternal reward, as if the world beyond these walls held some grand, redemptive design. Tom wasn’t convinced.

He had always found the idea of a higher power absurd. That some divine force could be both merciful and omnipotent, yet still allow a place like Wool’s to exist. That a god could sit idle while the world burned and children starved and the cruel thrived. He listened, but only to observe. As far as Tom was concerned, belief was just another tool. And like all tools, it was best wielded by those clever enough to understand it.

Still, he tolerated chapel. Sundays meant porridge with milk instead of water. Maybe even a crust of bread with jam. Warmth and sugar—things rationed the rest of the week like mercy. The food never reached indulgence, but it tasted faintly of kindness, which made it rare enough to crave.

He folded his hands in his lap the way he was supposed to. Aurelia sat beside him, ankles crossed neatly beneath her, chin tilted upward. Her face gave nothing away—serene and distant, like her thoughts were somewhere far away. A statue carved in concentration.

The service ended with a wheezing organ note and a chorus of half-muttered amens. The children filed out slowly, dressed in their best: buttoned coats and combed hair, scuffed shoes polished just enough to pass inspection. Somehow, Sundays made them all act a little softer. The fighting was quieter. The sneering, less frequent. Even Billy Stubbs kept his elbows to himself. Even the matron smiled, thin and crooked though it was.

Tom walked in silence beside Aurelia. The corridor between Saint Ives and the cafeteria echoed with shuffling shoes and whispered gossip.

He wondered if she had been thinking the same thing he had during the sermon—about salvation, about light, about the absurdity of Muggles praying to invisible gods while denying the miracles under their own skin.

Since the night they had scrubbed the entrance floor, water dripping from their sleeves, laughter suspended between them, they hadn’t gone back to being strangers.

Tom found himself seeking her out more than he meant to. Sitting near her in class. Walking with her when he could. Listening when she spoke—even when she wasn’t talking to him.

Now she was everywhere. In the halls. In the corners of classrooms. Across from him at the library table. The books he used to read alone sometimes now bore her notes beside his own.

They almost never had a moment safe enough to practice magic but that didn’t stop him from asking. She knew things. About magic. About the world beyond Wool’s.

And Tom was ravenous for it. For the truth of what she knew.

At night, when the orphanage fell silent and the air turned sharp in his lungs, he no longer counted ceiling cracks. He traced the pulse beneath his skin instead. That pull. That fire. His magic.

But sometimes, when he thought of her, the storm inside him softened. Like a sky just beginning to break after a long, hard rain. He didn’t know what to make of it.

Was she his friend? He had never had one before.

And yet… there she was. Walking beside him.

As they reached the threshold of the cafeteria, Miss Everly stood just outside the double doors, her white apron dusted with flour and something sticky that might have been jam. Her dark brown hair was pinned neatly off her face, and her cheeks were flushed pink from the warmth of the kitchen.

Tom had always thought her rather pretty—for someone nearing thirty and still tethered to a place like Wool’s. He couldn’t understand it. Women like her were supposed to be married, weren’t they? That was the way of things. Marriage, then children, then a slow slide into duty. Yet here she was, serving porridge to orphans.

She smiled when she saw them, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

Not until she looked at Aurelia.

There, the expression shifted. Just slightly. But Tom caught it. A softness edged in worry. She masked it quickly, smoothing her face like a hand over wrinkled fabric—but Tom saw. He always did. 

People spoke with more than just words. They said things with the way they stood, the way they touched their hair, the way their eyes lingered half a second too long. And Tom, quiet as he was, had spent a lifetime studying those tells. It was as if he could read minds. As if he could peel people open and read the pages inside.

Miss Everly stepped forward and bent slightly, placing a hand on Aurelia’s shoulder.
“May I have a moment, my dear?” she asked gently.

Tom felt something unexpected flare in his chest. Irritation, maybe. No—something more tangled than that. He didn’t like the idea of her being pulled aside. Of her being told things he couldn’t hear.

But Aurelia turned to him with that easy, unbothered smile of hers. Bright as it had been since the day she arrived.

“I’ll meet you in the cafeteria in a moment, Tom,” she said.

He nodded once and slipped past them, saying nothing.

The scent of syrup and fresh bread greeted him. The long tables were only half full, the other boys still filing in after chapel. Tom collected his plate and moved toward the back corner. Their corner.

She joined him a few minutes later, sliding into the seat across from him with her breakfast in hand. Tom didn’t look up from his book.

“What did Miss Everly want?” he asked, eyes still tracking the line he was reading.

Aurelia gave a soft shrug, placing her napkin on her lap with the kind of civility that didn’t match the chipped plates.

“Oh, nothing,” she replied, too lightly. “Just relaying a message from the Matron.”

At the mention of Mrs. Cole, Tom’s shoulders tensed. He said nothing, just turned a page more forcefully than necessary and kept reading.

This had become their routine: quiet mornings with porridge and books. After a while, their silence stopped feeling strained and settled into something almost… familiar.

After a few minutes, Tom noticed her glancing up. Not at him, but at his book. Her eyes skimming the lines on the page in front of him instead of her own.

He watched her for a moment, then stilled his hand just before turning the next page.

Seconds passed. She shifted slightly.

He waited longer.

Finally, she huffed, clearly trying not to seem impatient.

“Are you reading upside down?” he asked dryly, not bothering to mask the amusement in his voice.

Aurelia paused, then gave him a look. Lips pursed, eyebrows raised. The kind that said she had been caught but refused to admit it. She glanced back down at her own book as if it had suddenly become far more interesting.

But not two pages later, he felt her eyes on the page again. Her eyes skimming his words like she couldn’t help herself.

With a quiet sigh, he picked up his satchel from the chair beside him and dropped it to the floor.

Aurelia’s face lit up.

She didn’t say anything, just grinned, stood, and all but darted around the table to take the newly opened seat beside him. She slid into it easily, their shoulders nearly brushing, and leaned over to look at the book they now shared.

The rest of the hall could have vanished, and neither of them would have noticed.

After a few minutes of quiet reading, something small and hard struck Tom on the side of the head, landing with a dull tap on the open book before him. He looked down. A hazelnut sat in the crease of the pages.

Tom’s chair scraped loudly against the floor as he shoved himself up, heart slamming against his ribcage. He staggered back, hand clutching at his chest like he could physically hold back the reaction that might already be starting.

His throat—was it tightening? Was it just fear or the beginning of constriction?

He gasped in a breath. Then another. His lungs felt hot, the air scraping down raw. Panic prickled along his arms and neck.

He knew the sequence well: constriction of the airway, swelling of the lips and tongue, a crushing pressure in the chest. Last time it had happened, he had collapsed outside the kitchens. He would have died, too—if Miss Everly hadn’t found him and rushed him to the S t. Augustine Infirmary, the nearest emergency ward.

“Tom, it’s okay,” Aurelia said, standing quickly. “It’s only a hazelnut.”

Tom shook his head hard. “I’m deadly allergic,” he said through clenched teeth. “It can kill me.”

Aurelia snatched the book off the table, the hazelnut still sitting on top, and marched it to the bin, dumping the whole thing inside.

“There. Gone,” she said. “You’re safe. It’s okay. You’re going to be alright.”

Across the room, Andrew Weller and his pack of dimwitted shadows were laughing loud enough to rattle the dishes. Andrew leaned back in his chair, smug and grinning.

“Matron says we’re not to speak of it, but I will—we saw him, all of us. Talking to that snake like it understood every bloody word. What kind of boy does that, eh? You’re sittin’ next to a freak, girl. One of the dark ones. Mad little serpent boy.”

His voice was loud, mocking, made crueler by the way the other boys echoed him with snickers and claps on the back like it was the cleverest thing anyone had ever said.

But Aurelia… she had gone stiff beside him. Her fists were clenched on the table, knuckles white, curls trembling slightly with the effort it took not to rise. Her face was thunderous.

She looked like she could set the room on fire.

It looked strange on her. Not misplaced. Just… powerful. It sat in her eyes like heat behind glass.

She didn’t look away from them, her jaw tight. “How could they be so cruel?”

“It’s all right,” Tom said quietly, as if to calm her. “This is nothing new.”

Her fists clenched tighter against the table. “They could have killed you. They are not just bullies—they are brainless, barbaric idiots!”

For a fleeting second, Tom wasn’t sure if she was furious because he had nearly died—or because she’d had to throw the book away.

He let out a humorless snort and finally sank back into the seat beside her. “You’re just figuring that out?”

Aurelia shot him a sharp look. “No!” she snapped. “But we should do something about it.”

Tom leaned back slightly, dry as ever. “What, tell the Matron? She would probably give me the paddle for provoking them.”

He looked at her then, eyes cool. “There’s nothing to be done. They steal what they want, break what they can. That’s how it is here. You learn to live with it—or you lose everything.”

Aurelia didn’t smile. “I know,” she said, eyes locked on the boys across the room. “But that doesn’t mean we let them get away with it.”

She turned back to him then, and there was something fierce behind her expression.

“We get back at them,” she said simply. “And we make sure they regret it.”

Aurelia’s expression changed—not softer, exactly, but more focused. The kind of look a person gets when they have just thought of something brilliant and slightly terrible.

“I have an idea.”

He tilted his head, intrigued.

“If they want to steal your things, we should steal their things,” she said, far too sweetly.

A statement like that from her—so clean and composed—was not what he expected.

Tom raised a brow, interested despite himself. “That sounds like an excellent way to earn a week's worth of punishments.”

Her grin only widened. “Then don’t get caught. Call it… justice!”

Tom leaned back slightly, folding his hands in his lap. She wasn’t joking. She meant it. And that amused him far more than it should have.

“Go on.”

She leaned in slightly, whispering like they were conspiring in a spy novel.

“Let’s play a game. Let’s see who can steal more from the other boys by the end of the day.”

He studied her, trying to pin down what she was. So clever, so light on the surface—but under that calm poise, there was something ruthless. Something that whispered to a part of him he usually kept sealed off.

People underestimated her. They saw the curls and the soft jumpers and the bright smile and assumed innocence.

Fools.

She stuck out her hand. “Meet me in the boys’ wing before supper,” she said. “Winner gets… bragging rights,” she said, already looking toward the boys’ table like a general surveying the battlefield.

Tom looked at her hand. Then shook it once, firmly.

She grinned again. “And remember: Exodus 21:24.”

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Tom laughed under his breath.

Yes. He was utterly fascinated by her.

It was just before supper when Tom stood waiting outside the boys’ wing, glancing occasionally down the corridor for any sign of Aurelia. His hands were in his coat pockets, fingers curling slightly around the spoils of the afternoon—a silver thimble he had taken from Henry Pike, a yoyo lifted from Billy Stubbs, and Andrew Weller’s harmonica, which Tom had pocketed without hesitation. He had slipped away during outdoor play, feigning a stomachache to sneak back inside. The thefts had been targeted. Each item stolen from boys who delighted in tormenting him.

Tom didn’t particularly care about the objects themselves. It was the principle. A quiet triumph. A reordering of power.

Aurelia, on the other hand, had played her own clever game. She knew exactly how to charm them. How to make people feel seen and important. She played sweet and harmless so well, even the older boys let their guard down. But Tom had seen through it. And he was impressed.

“Oh, let me try!” she had said sweetly, blinking up at Peter Hobbs like he was a king as he rolled a wooden spinning top along the edge of the step. “You’re so good at it—I bet I’d never get it right.”

He had handed it over without hesitation.

She had distracted Jude Watkins with some nonsense about constellations she could “see” in the clouds, while her free hand slipped a slingshot from his coat pocket.

It was manipulation dressed up as kindness. Politeness as performance.

And it worked. Effortlessly.

Tom couldn’t help but admire it. It was artistry. She was showing him that power didn’t always come from fear—it could come from influence. From being liked. Trusted. She understood people in a way that he was only beginning to grasp.

She was a puppeteer, strings wrapped around her little fingers.

The light click of shoes on tile drew his attention.

Suddenly, she appeared at the end of the hall, walking toward him with her hands clasped behind her back and a grin stretched wide across her face.

“Well?” she asked, her voice bright with mischief. “Ready to see how thoroughly I beat you, Riddle?”

Tom arched an eyebrow. “You haven’t won yet.”

She tilted her head. “Confidence looks good on you. Arrogance, though…” She trailed off with a teasing smile.

But before she could reveal her winnings, a shout rang out from behind them.

“Riddle! You thief!”

Henry Pike stood frozen at the far end of the corridor, face red, eyes locked on them

“You took it! You took my mother’s thimble, you filthy little thief!” he bellowed and broke into a run.

Aurelia’s eyes widened for only a moment. Then she grabbed Tom’s sleeve. “Go!”

They tore down the hall, laughter bubbling from their chests. Their footsteps pounded against the floor as they reached the stairwell. Tom took the steps two at a time, Aurelia close behind, gripping the banister as they scrambled upward.

“Stop! I’m telling the Matron!” came the shout behind them.

But the next voice was closer.

Then Henry caught up. His hand closed roughly around Aurelia’s arm, yanking her back mid-step.

Tom skidded to a stop, ready to step in—but Aurelia beat him to it.

She twisted around, eyes wild, and with both hands shoved Henry back hard. He stumbled. His feet caught the edge of the step.

Tom watched in slow motion as the boy fell helplessly down the narrow staircase, limbs flailing, yelping all the way. The sound was brutal. Bone against wood.

He landed with one final thud.

“He’s fine,” she said breathlessly, grabbing his hand. “Come on!”

They ran, breathless and giddy with adrenaline. Tom yanked open a narrow door at the end of one hallway and pulled her inside. They found a rickety old ladder leading up behind a slatted wall. With no better options, they climbed. At the top, they pushed open a wooden hatch and emerged into a forgotten attic. Dust shimmered in the fading sunlight pouring through a window.

Aurelia giggled and dropped to the floor beneath the attic window, settling into the dust with her legs crossed. The glass glowed faintly behind her, and she turned to look up at Tom with a soft smile. It caught him off guard.

He was certain that if a god did exist—if there was anything divine in the world at all—it had briefly taken shape in the laugh that still clung to her lips.

Tom stood for a moment, watching her. The rush, the danger, the thrill of victory.

She was chaos. Charm and Fire. And she was magnificent.

And he was helplessly drawn in.

She patted the spot next to her. “Come on then.”

Tom sat down, facing her. She turned to him with mischief in her eyes and opened her hands. A cascade of pilfered treasures spilled into her lap—a marble. A rusted compass. A key with no known lock. A toy soldier missing one leg. A playing card with a mustache drawn on the queen. Someone’s pocket knife. A spool of red thread. A gold button. And what looked like the Matron’s ivory hairpin.

She grinned. “Well then,” she said. “Shall we see who’s the better criminal?”

Tom scoffed softly but reached into his coat and pulled out his three items. He laid them between them without ceremony: a tarnished silver thimble, a harmonica, and a cheap yoyo with the paint chipping off the sides.

Then, almost as an afterthought, he set down one final item: a paper flower, folded with care from a page of The Secret Garden. He knew it was one of her favorites. But he said nothing. He didn’t want her to know he had made it for her.

Aurelia squealed in triumph, clapping once and flopping her legs out with a grin. “Yes! Glory is mine!” she said dramatically.

Tom shook his head slowly, the corner of his mouth twitching. “I don’t know how you managed that. Most of them wouldn’t give a bent coin to their own mothers.”

She leaned toward him, eyes glittering. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said in a singsong voice, tucking the paper flower behind her ear. “Well… if you say: ‘Aurelia, you’re the greatest ever,’ maybe I’ll consider sharing my secrets.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re insufferable.”

She leaned closer, expectant. “Go on.”

He rolled his eyes but relented, deadpan. “Aurelia, you’re the greatest ever.”

She beamed, as if he had handed her a crown. “Thank you, Tom Riddle.”

“Well,” she began, sitting up straighter, tucking her legs under her, “it’s simple really. If you want people to do what you want, you need to make them want to do it. You don’t take—at least not directly. You guide. You make them believe it was their idea. You smile. You ask questions. You listen like you care—even if you don’t. You let them feel clever. Important. Seen. And once they trust you, they’ll hand you the world thinking it was their gift to give.”

She lifted the toy soldier like a trophy. “So really,” she said, “you charm your way into getting what you want.”

“So… manipulation.”

Aurelia grinned. “Charm. Manipulation. Same difference, isn’t it?”

Tom watched her carefully, weighing every word. Manipulation, he realized, wasn’t always force. Sometimes it was gentleness. Subtlety. Charm was a kind of magic too. One she wielded like second nature.

It made sense. More sense than anything anyone had ever told him. More than sermons or lessons about decency or duty. People didn’t listen because you were good. They listened because you were clever. Because you knew how to twist the strings.

Charm as leverage. Persuasion as power.

“And is that the trick you have been using on me?” he said, raising a brow. “When you want to read my books?”

Aurelia’s eyes widened with innocence. “No, never,” she said, biting back a smile. “It’s only because you take so dreadfully long to finish one.”

“We read at the same pace,” Tom muttered.

“We absolutely do not,” Aurelia said, nudging his knee with hers.

Tom scoffed, but didn't argue.

She smirked, victorious.

They sat in silence for a while, watching the rain slink down the glass. Everything felt far away from them in this dusty little attic, like time was pausing just for the two of them.

After a moment, Tom murmured, “You do know I’m going to get in terrible trouble for all of this.”

Aurelia didn’t answer right away. Instead, she reached forward and with her fingertip, wrote their initials in the fogged glass: A.W. + T.R.

“Not if we stay up here forever,” she whispered.

Tom stared at the letters, the curves of her name beside his, etched in condensation. For a moment, the attic didn’t feel like a place to hide. It felt like the only part of Wool’s that belonged to them.

It would disappear soon.

But he didn’t look away.

They didn’t leave the attic until the sky outside had deepened to near-black, the windows streaked with the last traces of light. Supper was long over, and the corridors had gone quiet. The storm had passed, but the air still held that rain-soaked heaviness and the brittle hush that settled just before a punishment.

At the bottom, just outside the boys’ dormitories, Aurelia stopped him. Her curls were wild from running, her cheeks flushed with stubborn resolve.

“I’ll say it was me,” she whispered. “They won’t punish me as badly—”

Tom’s jaw tensed. “Absolutely not.”

“There you are!”

Mrs. Cole appeared at the far end of the corridor, flanked by two local officials. Her face was stony, but her eyes burned. Tom tensed. Aurelia’s hand brushed his, but he gave her a hard look, shaking his head slightly. Don’t say anything. Let me.

“Take the girl back to her room,” she told the men.

But Aurelia stepped forward anyway. “It was me, Mrs. Cole. I did it!” she blurted. “I stole from the others and pushed Henry. Not Tom.”

The matron snorted, face twisting in mock sympathy. “Don’t be ridiculous, girl. You wouldn’t do vile things like this one. You’re too proper to ruin yourself for a nothing.”

Tom’s fists clenched, and she turned on her heel.

“Come,” she snapped.

He followed. There was no use resisting.

The walk back to his room was quiet, the two men trailing behind like shadows. When they reached the door, Mrs. Cole pushed it open and stepped aside. Inside, a man waited—Mr. Barrow, the night overseer. A tall, dry man with a mustache like a wire brush and a reputation for never missing his mark. He stood near Tom’s bed, a thin cane in his hands. 

The door clicked shut behind them.

“Pants off, boy,” Mr. Barrow said briskly

Tom obeyed. He stepped out of his wool trousers, leaving only cotton drawers—cold air prickling against his legs.

“Hands behind your back,” the man ordered.

Tom locked his fingers together, eyes on the wall ahead. He tried to take his mind somewhere else— somewhere with laughter —before the first crack of the cane sliced through the air.

The sound came first. Then the pain.

It tore across the backs of his thighs, searing like fire. The second blow followed fast, forcing a groan from his throat. He bit down hard, refusing to cry out.

Mrs. Cole lifted her chin, her mouth curling at the edges like she enjoyed it.

The third came harder. Tom’s mouth opened in a gasp, but no sound came out. Sweat broke along his hairline. He could feel his body resisting but his pride refused to let him give them the satisfaction of a scream.

The fourth landed high. The fifth sent him to his knees.

The man struck again across the shoulder sending Tom collapsing forward onto his hands. And still, it didn’t stop. The cane came faster now, as if Barrow meant to beat the life out of him.

One blow cracked across Tom’s cheek. 

Pain flared bright and blinding. He curled in on himself, arms shielding his face, the taste of blood warm in his mouth.

For a moment, he truly thought they might kill him. Right here. In this room. Where no one would ever know.

“Get up, boy,” Mr. Barrow barked.

“He can’t stand if you keep hitting him, Barrow,” Mrs. Cole said with a huff, casting a glance toward the door. Her voice dropped into something colder.

“Nowhere the authorities can see, remember?”

Tom rose slowly, trembling all over, jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. He didn’t speak.

The next set was to his palms.

“Hold them out.”

He obeyed. Five lashes, cut across his hands, each one a burst of white-hot pain that left welts rising instantly across the skin. He kept his gaze ahead. 

The final strike forced a noise from his throat but he didn’t cry. He would never cry.

When it was over, the silence in the room was thick. Mrs. Cole moved across to the bed, snatched the clothes Tom had folded neatly and the blanket he had laid out earlier.

“Let this be a lesson,” she said coldly. “You will not defy us again.”

Then the door slammed shut behind them. The sound made him flinch.

And then there was nothing but the silence of his small room and the ceiling cracks he knew by heart.

His shirt clung to his back with sweat. His legs burned.

Alone.

But something stirred beneath all that pain. He wouldn’t forget how this felt.

Tom lay shivering, eyes fixed on the ceiling. The rain outside fell steady and cold, each drop a dull drumbeat against the windowpane. He listened to it the way someone listens to breath in the dark. He had been lying like this for what felt like hours, thinking of nothing.

And Tom Riddle never thought of nothing.

Distantly, he knew he had a life. A sad one. But he wasn’t in it now. He was somewhere else. Nowhere.

Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Cracks in the plaster above him.

Somewhere in the distance, a door clicked softly. It might have been the matron. Maybe she had come to punish him again. He didn’t care. His limbs were too stiff with cold, his skin still stung from the cane. He felt stripped down to the bone.

Then the bed dipped beside him.

A small shape, warm and steady, shifted into the space next to him. A blanket was draped gently over his trembling shoulders. She laid beside him.

She smelled of sunshine. And soap. And the outside world.

Tom didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes on the cracks.

She did the same, saying nothing for a long time.

And then, finally, her voice broke the stillness.

“I’m—I’m so sorry, Tom. I didn’t know they would punish you this badly.”

He said nothing. His throat was tight, his body still trembling from earlier. He didn’t know what to call the feeling twisting in his chest. Shame, maybe. Or something close to it. He had never felt humiliated before.

But he didn’t care.

Some buried part of him needed her there. And that terrified him more than the pain.

He didn’t understand why she had come. Why she would risk getting caught. But the moment she slipped into that narrow bed, something in him settled. A strange, fragile calm. As if her presence had pulled him back from some faraway ledge.

Her delicate hand slipped into his.

He didn’t move at first. But then slowly, his fingers curled around hers. He held her hand like a boy trying to remember what safety felt like.

Her heartbeat fluttered through her fingertips like ripples across still water. Little waves of something he could only think of as peace. A tether, pulling him back from that quiet place in his head where he went to disappear.

After a while, he whispered, “What did Miss Everly say to you today?”

She went still. Then, finally, she exhaled.

“She told me to stay away from you.”

Tom closed his eyes. Letting the words sit in the dark. 

He supposed he should feel hurt by that. But he didn’t.

What he felt was anger—that they would try to separate her from him.

He would never hurt her. Never her.

But a small voice in the back of his mind whispered that maybe he would. That maybe they weren’t entirely wrong.

“You should listen to her.”

“No,” Aurelia said quietly. “I will not, Tom.”

The room fell quiet again, except for the gentle thrum of the rain on the windows.
He turned his head toward her then, only slightly, but enough to see the shine of her eyes in the dark. She was clutching a pink stuffed bunny to her chest.

“That night,” he said quietly, “when you taught me about wandless magic—when you said you pull from light. From happiness. From good memories.” He paused, eyes drifting. “I lied to you. That’s not how it works for me.”

She turned to him, listening.

“My magic doesn’t feel like that,” he whispered. “It’s not warmth. Or happiness. It’s something else. It builds in me. From anger. From pain. From wanting to hurt the ones who deserve it. It coils under my skin like fire, waiting—waiting for the moment I let it loose. And it’s always there.”

And it never feels wrong.  

“I feel only darkness. All the time. It lives in me. Like something coiled beneath my skin. It’s like a shadow lives inside me, and sometimes I think… maybe that’s all I am.”

It sounded ugly out loud. But it was the truth.

And still, she didn’t recoil. 

There was a long pause before she answered.

“There’s no such thing as light or dark magic, Tom,” she said softly. “Only light or dark intentions. Our magic follows our emotions but we’re the ones who choose how to use it. You’re not made of darkness. You’re made of choices. ”

He let the silence stretch between them before saying, “You still should not be friends with me,” he muttered. “I’m not safe. They all see it. They look at me like I’m something wrong. A villain in one of our stories, and they are just waiting for the end.”

Aurelia was quiet. Then she said softly:

“You will never be the villain in my story.”

She paused.

“But every story needs one.”

She traced her thumb along the back of his hand.

They lay in silence for a long time, the rain tapping gently on the window.

“Promise me something,” he said into the silence.

Aurelia turned towards him, her grip on his hand tightening.

“Anything.”

“When we’re old enough,” he murmured, “we’ll leave. We’ll get out of here. We’ll go as far as we can. And we’ll never look back.”

“I promise.”

Chapter Text

Kent Coast, England | Location of Cave — June 1938 | Part 1

Tom sat near the back of the bus, the window half-cracked beside him letting in a lazy thread of salt-scented breeze. Next to him, Aurelia had a book perched on her lap, though her eyes kept drifting from the page to the passing countryside. Her curls bounced with each bump in the road, catching sunlight through the dusty glass. It made the freckles across her cheeks glow, like scattered gold.

The bus was cramped, warm, and filled with the restless energy of nearly two dozen children pressed into thin seats. It reeked of old upholstery and the anticipation of freedom. For most of the boys, the annual trip was a chance to stir up trouble in the shops and run wild across the beach. For the Matron, it was a twisted form of charity—her yearly declaration that Wool’s raised decent children, capable of experiencing “culture” beyond the orphanage’s iron gates.

The younger boys were throwing paper buttons, crumpled bits of sugar wrappers, and shouting about rock candy and sea monsters. Someone was singing off-key. One of the older boys had taken to pounding the seat back in front of him. Tom was fairly certain it would splinter soon.

Group outings with the other boys were his personal version of purgatory—noise, jostling, the stink of unwashed sweaters—but even Tom had to admit he was looking forward to the change in scenery.

The day would be divided in half. First, time spent roaming the town’s narrow streets and poking through dusty shops—at least for those lucky enough to have pocket money from distant relatives. Then, an afternoon at the beach.

St. Margaret’s Bay.

The town was small, lined with Georgian terraces, and the beach there was pebbled and gray. Not beautiful but wide and private enough to keep them from bothering anyone proper. And, more importantly, there was a cave. Low and half-hidden, set back in the rock where the tide didn’t always reach.

It had taken Tom two years to work out exactly where it was.

This year, he planned to find it again.

Since being caught stealing, he had spent the better part of the last three months locked in isolation. His room had become a cell—no warmth, no food beyond what was necessary, and no company. Tom didn’t mind the silence or the cold. He was used to that. But being barred from seeing her—that had been the true punishment. Mrs. Cole had seen to it, citing concerns of “corruption” and “bad influence.” 

If only she knew.

As if Aurelia was something pristine that needed preserving.

She’d have laughed at that.

What the matron didn’t know was that Aurelia had found ways to slip past rules and locked doors. Some nights, when the corridors were quiet and the others asleep, she would come to his room. Sometimes they would read together, sometimes they whispered stories or played games, inventing whole kingdoms in hushed tones. And more often now, they practiced small magic together. 

Sometimes she made a blue light hover above her palm like a tiny sun. Tom had never told her, but he dreamed about it.

Those nights had become a refuge.

Lately, the restrictions had softened. His punishments were fewer, the watching eyes slightly less present. They were allowed to speak again in daylight. Allowed to walk side by side.

Now, as the bus rattled down the winding road toward the coast, he watched her out of the corner of his eye. Her lashes were long and dark against her cheeks as she glanced out the window. Every time the sun moved behind the clouds, she tilted her head for a better look, as if chasing the light.

The bus groaned to a stop, hissing as it settled at the curb. Instantly, the children pressed against the windows like flies against glass, their fingers smudging the panes as they stared wide-eyed at the rows of shops just beyond.

The children spilled out onto the street like loose marbles, jostling and giddy with the illusion of freedom. Tom moved slower. As he stepped down, his eyes found Miss Everly.

He had once thought Miss Everly was different. That she was one of the only ones at Wool’s who didn’t look at him like he was broken. But Aurelia had told him what she said. Stay away from him . Like he was poison that might stain her fingertips.

He would remember that.

Tom reflexively felt the outside of his coat pocket making sure the small object was still inside. Since Aurelia had told him to get better at hiding his things, he had taken to keeping it on him at all times.

Aurelia tugged him forward as the crowd of children scattered, coins clutched in grubby palms, hurrying toward shops and stalls like it was Christmas morning.

Mrs. Cole bellowed after them from the curb, red-faced and sweating.
“Back at this spot by the hour— or don’t come back at all! ”

She probably meant it. Tom doubted she’d lose sleep over a few missing orphans.

The town bustled with morning life. Shop doors swung open with cheery chimes, flower boxes spilled with color from windowsills, and somewhere down the road, a radio played the latest jazz tune from London.

They passed bakeries with steaming windows, hat shops with wide-brimmed displays, and stores selling everything from fishing nets to postcards with faded sunsets. As they rounded a corner, a burst of color caught Aurelia’s attention.

“ Oh! ” she gasped.

He followed her wide-eyed gaze to a candy shop so bright and colorful it looked like it had been plucked from a child’s dream. The windows were painted with swirls of sugar canes and lemon drops, and the display inside sparkled with every sweet imaginable.

“Tom. We have to go in there!”

Her curls bounced around her face as she half-jumped in place, then without warning, she grabbed his hand and tugged him into a jog, weaving between carriages and bicycles and the shrieking crowd of children. Tom barely had time to protest before they were through the door.

The candy shop was an explosion of color and scent. Jars of every size lined the walls, filled with pastilles, toffees, gumdrops, and striped humbugs. Children shrieked and dashed between shelves, hands smudging the glass cases. It was too loud, too bright.

“Welcome, welcome!” came a cheery voice.

Behind the counter stood a round man with cheeks like ripe apples and a checkered bowtie. “Come in, dears—best sweets in Kent! First taste is always free!”

Tom took it in with a flat stare. He didn’t much like candy. Not that he had ever had enough to form an opinion. But Aurelia? She practically glowed.

She darted between jars like a bee among flowers, pointing out sweets she remembered, ones she hadn’t seen since before her mother disappeared. She filled a paper bag until it was nearly bursting, ignoring Tom’s insistence that he didn’t want anything.

They ended up at the front of the shop with her arms full of striped bags and toffee sticks. The man at the counter whistled at the haul and rang her up while winking.

They wandered through the streets, the air filled with the salty tang of the sea and the distant caw of gulls. Aurelia nibbled at her bullseye, talking between bites, her voice light with enthusiasm.

“Did you know sweets are pulled to trap air, which makes them look shiny?” she said, holding up a sweet like it was an artifact. “It’s the same technique they used in Victorian glass.”

Tom gave her a sidelong glance. “Fascinating.”

She didn’t notice the sarcasm— or didn’t care. “Also, they used real beetle shells to color raspberry drops. Isn’t that wonderful?”

He snorted. “Disgusting, actually.”

From there, they tried on ridiculous hats at the milliner’s and got kicked out of a toy store after Aurelia accidentally knocked over a tower of tin soldiers. They visited a music shop, where Tom listened to the records spin as Aurelia pretended to conduct an orchestra. They passed a booth selling postcards, and she made him pick out the ugliest one so she could mail it to the matron “just to brighten her day.”

Next, a dusty stationery shop. She examined each kind of ink with reverence, dabbing test blotches onto thin slips of paper. “This one’s crimson,” she whispered. “Imagine writing letters in crimson.”

Tom lingered by the wax seals, thinking how satisfying it would be to stamp his initials on a letter if he ever had someone worth writing to.

She tugged him into a haberdashery next, where buttons were displayed in jars like gemstones and ribbon spools lined the walls in perfect rows. Aurelia tried on a pair of gloves two sizes too big and offered Tom a particularly garish bow tie. He raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. She laughed.

It was, against all odds, fun.

Then they found the bookshop. Dunne’s Books & Curiosities.

The shop was quiet and cool, its walls lined from floor to ceiling with books so fresh they still smelled of ink and glue. Tom drifted immediately to the classics section, his fingers brushing the spines like he was greeting old friends. Aurelia wandered off toward a collection near the back.

He paused in front of a small cluster of Shakespearean plays, pulling out a worn copy of The Winter’s Tale. He flipped through the pages, skimming scenes—Perdita, the lost child; the themes of rebirth, of identity hidden and found.

“Tom? We should probably head back before Matron punishes us.”

He startled, clutching the book reflexively before tucking it smoothly into the inside of his jacket.

At the front of the shop, she was waiting with a paper bag in hand.

“What did you get?” he asked.

She shrugged, cradling the book close. “Nothing. Just something I was looking for.”

Back on the bus, most of the children were already piled into their seats, arms full of penny sweets and tin toys. Aurelia slid into the spot beside him and tucked her purchases beneath the bench.

By the time they reached the beach, the sky had turned a leaden gray. Wind rushed in from the sea, fierce and unrelenting, snapping at the hem of Aurelia’s dress and whipping her curls wildly across her face.

They kicked off their shoes and socks, the sand cold and damp beneath their feet. The other children scattered toward the shoreline, shrieking and chasing the foamy edges of the tide like it was some kind of salvation. But Tom and Aurelia veered away from them, finding a quiet patch farther down the shore, where the sand turned coarse and the water crashed hard against the rocks.

Aurelia sat first, folding her knees into her chest, then shifting forward to dig her toes into the sand. Tom settled beside her, letting the chill rise up through his feet. She scooped up a handful of damp sand and let it pour from her fingers slowly, like she was sifting through time.

She wasn’t smiling. Her face was turned toward the sea, but her eyes weren’t seeing it. 

He could read people as easily as pages, break down a lie before it finished leaving someone’s lips. But this— sadness —had always been foreign to him. He could spot it, yes. Understand it, academically. But feel it? Comfort it?

That was a language he had never learned to speak. It usually made him uncomfortable. 

But Aurelia wasn’t like everyone else.

Her curls had fallen across her face, hiding her from him. He reached up, gently brushing the hair away so he could see her properly.

She was crying.

A single tear slid down her cheek. Then another.

Tom’s brow furrowed. Did he do something wrong? Was she angry with him? He hated how unsure he suddenly felt.

His voice came out quieter than he meant. “Did I upset you?”

She shook her head. A slow, small motion.

“What is it then?”

“My mum,” she whispered. “She used to bring me to the beach every summer.”

She wiped at her face, but the tears didn’t stop.

“She used to bring me to the beach in the summers. Somewhere with cliffs like these, and water so cold it stung your toes.” Her eyes weren’t focused on anything now. “We’d chase the tide until I was soaked and freezing. She always had this huge blue towel… it smelled like violets and sea salt. She’d wrap me up in it, all warm and soft, and tuck my hair behind my ears like I was made of glass.”

Tom listened. He had nothing to compare it to. No beach memories. No mothers with flower-scented towels. No warmth that existed beyond her.

“We’d bring strawberries, fresh bread. She’d pull them from this squeaky picnic basket that always got sand in the corners, no matter what. And we’d look for shells together, little white ones that made a whistling sound if you held them to your ear.”

She paused, eyes wet, fingers still sinking into the sand.

“The last thing we always did,” she said softly, “was look for shells.”

Tom looked down. By his foot, half-buried in the sand, sat a pale flat shell, no bigger than his palm. He picked it up, brushing the sand off with his fingers, and held it out to her.

Aurelia looked at it for a moment before reaching out to take it.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He stood and held out his hand.

“Come on,” he said.

She took it, letting him pull her up with ease. Aurelia’s smile was already returning, bright as ever. She shook off the sand from her dress and looked up at him.

“Where are we going?”

“Looking for shells,” he said, a little stiff, but there was warmth behind it. “If that’s what you would like.”

“Yes,” she grinned, curls bouncing. “Let’s see who can collect the most.”

Tom snorted lightly. “You turn everything into a competition.”

“You’re still mad that I beat you last time. Everything’s more fun when there’s something to win,” she said with a grin before darting off, her bare feet leaving faint prints behind her. 

They split off, walking the grey stretch of sand as the wind pulled at their clothes. Tom knelt beside a tide pool, sifting through the wet grit until he found a large, pink spiral shell, smooth and near perfect. It barely fit in his palm. He held it up, examining the way it caught the light. It was the only one he kept.

When they met again, Aurelia had her dress bunched at the sides, holding a rainbow of fragments in her skirt. She plopped down, releasing them in a clatter of chipped edges and sandy colors.

Tom sat beside her, studying the collection. Most were cracked. Fractured along their edges. Still, she held them like treasure.

“Seven,” he said.

“Seven is my favorite number,” she said, arranging them into a crooked little line.

He ran his fingers across the shells, thoughtful.

“It’s meant to be the most magical number,” she explained.

“I only found one,” Tom admitted, pulling his pink shell from his pocket and placing it in her palm. The spiral shimmered faintly in the light, catching the colors of the sea.

He wouldn’t tell her he had seen others. Perhaps dozens. But they were jagged or dull, pieces of what once was whole. None of them felt worth giving to her.

Her face lit up. “Tom… it’s beautiful.”

She looked at him for a long moment, and he found it hard to meet her eyes.

“Sometimes,” she said, her fingers tracing the spiral, “It’s better to have one beautiful thing than many broken pieces.”

She smiled and looked at him. “So, I suppose we both win.”

She gave him the seven she had picked. All different. Imperfect. Yet when placed together, they made sense—like scattered pieces of something once whole.

Aurelia popped up to her feet, brushing the sand from her hands. “Come on,” she said, pointing toward a rocky outcrop at the far edge of the beach. “I want to see what’s on the other side.”

And before he could answer, she was off, lifting her dress and sprinting across the beach. “I’ll beat you there!”

Tom sighed, already jogging after her. “You cheat,” he muttered, but there was no real annoyance in it. She was already scrambling up the rocky rise, arms stretched for balance as she crossed the jagged path like a tightrope.

But halfway there, a group of boys stepped into his path. Henry Pike and his friends.

“Move,” Tom said flatly.

Henry shoved him instead. “Where are you off to, lover boy?”

Tom barely stumbled, rage already flickering under his skin.

Dennis Bishop broke into a sprint, heading toward the ledge. Toward Aurelia.

Tom’s voice caught in his throat. “Aurelia—!”

“No,” Tom growled, pushing past Henry, sprinting. 

“Aurelia!” he shouted.

But it was too late.

Dennis reached her as she was halfway across the narrow strip. She turned at the sound of Tom’s shout just as Dennis slammed both hands into her back.

Her feet slipped.

There was a scream, and then the sound of her body hitting the rocks below.

Chapter Text

Kent Coast, England | Location of Cave — June 1938 | Part 2

He launched himself over the ledge and into the sea below.

He hit hard, barely missing the rocks she had smashed into seconds earlier. Cold swallowed him whole. The current dragged at his limbs, waves pounding the cliffs with a sound like thunder. Salt scorched his eyes as he broke the surface, gasping. The sea heaved and crashed against the stone wall, pulling him under again. His feet kicked for ground, but found only dark, endless water.

“Aurelia!”

His voice tore into the wind, swallowed instantly.

“Aurelia!” Louder now, the panic raw and unfamiliar in his throat.

No answer. Only the roar of the sea.

The tide hurled him like a rag doll. He plunged beneath the surface, arms sweeping through the black water. His chest tightened. Panic rose like a living thing inside him.

He burst up again, coughing, lungs on fire, the world spinning around him.

He dragged in another breath and dove, deeper this time, forcing himself past the cold’s crushing grip. The water closed over him, dark and endless. He pushed further down, hands clawing through the void—until he found her.

He reached again, groping blindly until his hand locked around her arm.

He yanked upward with everything he had, breaking the surface in a violent gasp. Her head lolled against his shoulder, her body limp in the swell. He turned, kicking furiously toward the jagged ledge. The current fought him. Waves slammed against his back like fists. But he didn’t let go. He would never let go.

He reached the rocks and hauled her over the ledge, scraping his palms raw. His knees slammed against stone as he dragged her clear of the surf and collapsed beside her.

“Aurelia,” he said, breathlessly.

“Aurelia,” he repeated leaning over her, shaking her shoulders. “Aurelia, come on—come on—”

Her skin was ice. She wasn’t moving.

“Aurelia—” 

He shook her harder than he meant to. She had only been under for seconds, but it felt like an eternity. His mind raced. He couldn’t lose her.

She jerked forward, water spilling from her mouth, lungs heaving as she clutched at the ground.

Relief surged through him. He slumped for half a second, dizzy from the adrenaline.

She rolled onto her side, coughing, shivering, bracing herself on her hands and knees. He steadied her, one arm across her back, eyes scanning her face like he couldn’t believe she was alive.

There was blood. Everywhere. Streaking down her arms, staining the white of her dress from a cut on her thigh that soaked into the seam in a fast-growing crimson bloom. Her curls clung to her face like seaweed. Wet grit smeared her palms. Her knees were scraped raw.

Tom stood slowly, jaw clenched until pain shot through his temples. The wind screamed across the rocks, but it was nothing compared to the pressure building under his skin. His fists tightened until his nails bit into his palms. His breath came short and sharp, each one a fight to keep from exploding.

Aurelia followed his gaze.

“I’m alright,” she said breathlessly, eyes flashing up to his. “I’m only cut.”

Tom didn’t hear her.

Something inside him snapped. It was like a thread breaking behind his eyes, heat rushing in to fill the space. The roar of the waves faded into a high, seething buzz.

It was total and all-consuming. A tide all its own. It rushed through him, slamming into his ribs like the waves below.

They pushed her. They hurt her. They tried to take her from him.

And they would pay for it.

Tom Riddle saw red. And something inside him, something buried and ancient, stirred awake.

They will pay.

Tom helped her back in silence.

The wind screamed around them as they climbed the narrow path up the ledge, Aurelia limping beside him, her soaked dress sticking to her legs, blood still dripping from the gash in her thigh. Her skin was chalk-white now. Tom’ s hand stayed firm on her elbow, even as his own body trembled with something far more dangerous than exhaustion.

Miss Everly spotted them from across the beach.

“Dear God— Aurelia!” she gasped, sprinting toward them, dropping to her knees beside the girl. “What happened? What—what in heaven’s name— are you alright? Are you hurt? Is anything broken? What happened down there?”

Her voice cracked through the air, but to Tom, it was distant and muffled. Like it was happening underwater.

Aurelia’s voice came quiet, nearly drowned out by the roar of the sea behind them.

“It was Bishop… and Henry Pike. They pushed me off the rocks.”

Miss Everly paled as she knelt beside Aurelia, inspecting the gash and barking instructions for someone to fetch bandages from the bus. She tried to comfort her, but Tom was elsewhere—somewhere darker. Somewhere he hadn’t let himself go before.

Tom heard her speak, but it was distant. Like she was underwater again and he was nowhere near the surface. The crashing of the waves echoed louder than her voice, louder than anything else.

But he couldn’t feel anything beyond the boiling silence in his own head. The buzzing hum. The numbness. It pulsed behind his ribs and clawed at his throat.

He wanted to hurt someone. To make them scream. He wanted to see blood.

Not with fists. Not like some stupid brawl in the courtyard. No —he wanted to hurt them properly. He wanted to watch the light leave their eyes. He wanted them to feel helpless, small, and completely at his mercy.

Miss Everly turned toward him, her mouth moving but the words didn’t land.

“Tom—”

He didn’t hear her say his name the first time.

But then her hands were on his shoulders. “Tom,” she said again, cutting through the noise in his mind.

His head didn’t move, but his eyes flicked over to meet hers.

And in that moment, she saw it.

The fury in his expression was hollow, soulless. His stare had gone cold and somewhere deep within those dark eyes, something flickered. A gleam of scarlet, like the first spark in a pyre that would burn the world.

Her hand rose to cradle his cheek reverently, as if she were marveling at the darkness she saw there. Her voice sank to a whisper meant for him alone.

“Go find them.”

There was the smallest glint of something else in her eyes. 

Satisfaction.

Like she had been waiting for this. 

Tom turned, his bare feet pressing into the cold sand as he headed back toward the shore. The boys were still there—laughing, shoving each other, playing as if nothing had happened. As if Aurelia hadn’t bled.

As he approached, their laughter turned toward him.

“Well, well—look who’s come crawling back,” one jeered. “Come to defend your little girlfriend , Riddle?”

Another snorted. “Yeah, maybe we pushed her too hard—what’re you gonna do about it, freak?”

“Careful,” another chimed in, grinning. “He might get you with his demon eyes.”

Tom stopped a few feet away. Slowly, he pulled off his shirt and let it fall to the sand. When he looked up, the rage was gone. In its place was a charming smile.

“No need for dramatics,” he said smoothly. “I’m sure it was just… a misunderstanding. Boys will be boys, after all.”

There was something disarming in his voice. Like honey laced with something bitter.

The boys stared at him. Suspicious and Confused.

“There’s a cave,” Tom continued, his voice silky, persuasive. “Just past that bend. Hidden in the cliffside. You can only get to it when the tide’s right.”

He glanced out at the water, then back at them. “I’m going. You can come if you would like.”

They scoffed, followed by laughter.

“Like we would follow you anywhere, freak,” someone muttered.

Tom only smiled wider, unbothered. He turned around and started walking.

And behind him, Dennis began to follow, Andrew falling into step a moment later.

“Where are you going?” one boy barked, grabbing Dennis by the arm. “Oi—he’s mental ! You don’t go anywhere with him, d’you hear?”

But the warning fell flat. Dennis and Andrew’s eyes were glazed like polished stones. They followed Tom in silence, drawn by something they didn’t understand. Something they couldn’t resist.

They walked along the water’s edge, waves licking at their ankles, until the cliffs gave way to the narrow bend Tom had remembered. There, half-hidden in the stone, was the cave.

The cave swallowed them in darkness, its walls slick with seawater and the scent of salt thick in the air. A narrow ledge jutted from the rock, just high enough to escape the tide. Tom hauled himself onto it, water streaming from his hair and clothes.

The boys followed, their eyes still glassy and vacant. They waited motionless, like puppets waiting for the tug of his hand.

Tom closed his eyes. The darkness here was different. His magic gathered in it, coiling tighter, stronger, until it pressed against the inside of his skin. He could feel the threads between them, invisible but unbreakable, running from his hands into their minds.

They were his to move. His to command. He could make them kneel. Make them suffer. Make them destroy each other.

Anything he wanted.

Dennis’s fist shot out, catching Andrew in the side of the head. Andrew stumbled, then retaliated, slamming his knuckles into Dennis’s jaw. Dennis tackled him, dragging him to the cave floor, pinning him beneath his weight as he swung again and again.

Blood hit the stone like rain.

Andrew grabbed a rock. He swung wildly striking Dennis in the temple.

Dennis roared, lurching back, then grabbed Andrew by the collar and shoved him down, his head plunging into a tide pool. He held him there, water churning red around his fists. Andrew thrashed. The cave filled with the muffled sounds of splashing and strangled screaming.

Again. And again.

Andrew flailed, arms slapping against the water.

He clawed wildly at Dennis’s face, fingernails dragging bloody trails across his cheeks. Whatever innocence they had died in that cave.

Only then did Tom open his eyes.

The darkness recoiled—sated.

He could feel it—the thing inside him. The darkness he had always known. It pulsed in his chest like a second heart. Like something ancient had awoken, and was finally being fed after years of hunger.

The boys released each other as if jerked from a trance. They scrambled back against the cave wall like animals.

He stepped forward until he stood over them.

“If you ever touch her again,” he said simply, “I will kill you.”

His voice did not rise.

“And I will enjoy it.”

Neither of them spoke. They only scrambled to their feet and ran—stumbling into the water, choking on sobs, disappearing back into the surf like they were being chased by death itself.

Tom stood in the silence that followed, the sea crashing beyond the mouth of the cave.

Tom had planned something different for the cave today.

He had wanted to explore its magic, learn its depth. There was power in that place, ancient and coiled tight in the stone. But what had happened… what had awakened in him… surpassed anything he had imagined.

His fingers trailed along the wall as he walked out, tracing the jagged surface. Still buzzing with the echo of what he had done, he stepped back into the cold water and began to swim toward the shore.

By the time he reached the beach, the children were already beginning to gather near the bus, sun-drowsy and dripping with salt water. Laughter carried faintly across the wind. Miss Everly stood by the doors, checking heads and calling names.

Aurelia spotted him before he reached them.

She was sitting on a flat rock near the edge of the group, her leg bandaged beneath the hem of her now-dried dress, another strip of cloth wrapped around her forearm. Her curls were still damp, but she looked better. Until she saw the two figures behind him and the brightness in her face collapsed.

She stood up slowly, eyes wide, and took a step back.

Andrew and Dennis trailed behind Tom, several paces back, blood still drying in patches across their skin. Their faces were bruised and swollen beyond recognition. They walked stiffly, like marionettes with fraying strings.

Aurelia’s voice was barely a whisper. “Tom…?”

He didn’t answer.

“What did you do?” she asked, panic blooming. “Tom, what did you do! Answer me!”

He stopped a few feet away, the wind tugging at his clothes, the sea crashing behind him. He stared at her, water dripping from his hair. 

“They could have killed you,” he said plainly.

They could have taken you away from me.

Her face twisted. “That’s not what I asked!”

“I didn’t do anything they didn’t deserve.”

“No.” She stepped back again. Her face was pale. “No— they’re children , Tom.”

“They hurt you ,” he snapped. “I told you who I was. I told you to stay away from me. I can’t control it. Don’t act surprised.”

He took a step forward, but she recoiled.

“Don’t act surprised?” she echoed, shaking her head in horror. “You could have killed them. And you don’t even look fazed. You don’t even look like you care.”

“I wanted to kill them,” he said flatly.

For touching you.

He had no remorse. No apology for what he had done. 

Just the searing, possessive fury still simmering in his blood.

Aurelia’s lips parted in disbelief. She looked at him like he was someone she didn’t recognize. Like something dangerous and strange had slipped its mask.

“Maybe they were right,” she whispered. “Maybe I should have stayed away from you.”

She turned and ran, disappearing onto the bus. 

Tom sat at the small desk in his room, chin in hand, watching the rain crawl in slow rivulets down the glass. Beyond the window, the streetlamp flickered against the wet dark, its light catching on the sheen of puddles. A couple passed beneath it, breathless with laughter, dashing through the downpour with a coat held above their heads.

Between them, a small boy squealed, his shoes slapping through the water as they hurried toward a waiting car. The father opened the back door, and the child clambered in. The mother followed, brushing the rain from his hair before ducking into the front seat.

The boy turned once, looking toward the orphanage windows before the door shut behind him.

The room behind Tom was silent. The only sound came from the ticking of the clock and the gentle tap of rain against the glass.

The boys had said nothing since the beach.

Not a word about what happened inside the cave. No denials, no accusations. Nothing.

Psychologists had a term for it—dissociative amnesia. The mind’s way of shielding itself from trauma. When something shatters you too deeply, too suddenly, it carves a hole. The memory floats away, disconnected, like a severed root. Protection through omission.

He doubted they even remembered the truth clearly. Not the way it had actually happened. Their minds would twist it into dreams or nightmares. A flash of blood. The feel of water. Screams without reason. Faces without form.

But silence wasn’t the same as protection.

The Matron had pulled him aside when they arrived, her grip firm on his shoulder.

“I know you had something to do with it,” she had hissed. “You can lie all you want, but there’s something not right in you, boy. I’ve already written to someone. Someone will be coming to see you. Someone who knows how to deal with… your sort.”

What he had was power.

Real power. The kind that made other people kneel. That let him bend their minds, twist their thoughts. He could reach inside someone’s mind and pull out obedience like thread from a spool. He could make someone laugh or scream or bleed without ever lifting a finger. What he had was control. Pure and perfect.

He could have anything he wanted.

The thought filled him with something close to satisfaction. Excitement, even.

There was nothing wrong with him. What lived inside him wasn’t a sickness—it was power.

But then there was Aurelia.

Her face when she looked at him. Like he was a stranger. Like he had done something wrong . As if he hadn’t warned her from the very beginning. As if he hadn’t looked her dead in the eyes and said:

This is what I am.

Her words still echoed in his head. That fear in her eyes. That sorrow.

Maybe I should have stayed away.

“A man’s character is his fate.” Heraclitus had written. Concise and final. What one was could never be separated from what one would become.

Tom didn’t believe people changed. Darkness didn’t drain away like a fever. It didn’t “heal.” It wove itself into the very matter of who you were. Threaded into muscle, blood and bone. His darkness was his spine, murmuring through marrow, guiding his hand with a voice older than mercy.

Aurelia was ever the savior. But he didn’t want to be saved.

He wanted to be understood .

And he knew there could only ever be two endings to their story.

She would accept him for what he was. Or she wouldn’t.

Tom didn’t turn when the door opened behind him. His eyes stayed fixed on the car outside, its red taillights glowing through the curtain of rain as it pulled away from the curb. He watched as it vanished down the road, off to a house somewhere—where there would be warmth, and dinners, and kind voices saying things like I love you and I’m proud of you.

The door shut with a soft click. Only then did he turn.

Aurelia stood just inside, her figure shadowed by the darkness. One arm was wrapped in gauze, the edge of a bandage peeking from under her sleeve.

The sight of it stirred another slow wave of fury in him. His jaw tightened, and he forced himself to look just past her shoulder, to a fixed crack on the plaster wall.

They stood like that for a moment, the silence tense and full.

Aurelia crossed the room in three quick steps and threw her arms around him. She wrapped him in a tight, urgent hug, her face pressed against his chest, her fingers gripping the fabric at his back like she was anchoring herself to him.

Then slowly, he brought his arms around her and held her.

He let his chin rest lightly against the top of her head.

Her voice came softly.

“I’m sorry, Tom,” she whispered, her voice muffled in the fabric of his shirt. “I—I know you can’t always control it. I panicked. But I know you would never hurt me.”

“You could have died,” he said flatly. “You were going to leave me alone in this place.”

“I know,” she said, pulling back just enough to look at him, her eyes still shiny with leftover emotion. “But I didn’t. I’m okay. I promise.”

She reached for his hand and pulled him gently toward the bed. They sat down, Aurelia crossing her legs as she placed a small leather journal in her lap. “Grab me a pen?”

Tom did as she asked, placing it into her outstretched hand as he took the spot beside her again. 

She flipped the journal open to the first page.

“You always talk about your magic like it’s something dark. Like it’s something angry. Something separate from you.”

She began to write carefully.

Tom Marvolo Riddle

“I was thinking,” she said. “What if we give that part of you a name? Not you, not the real you. Just the side that tries to take over.”

“I read something once. Paradise Lost. Milton’s story about the first battle between good and evil. The fall of Satan. In it, Satan calls himself ‘Lord of Hell.’ A name he chose, not one given to him. There’s a line—”  She glanced up now, her eyes catching his. “— The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. ”

Her lips curved faintly, not a smile exactly. “It means you decide what the world is. You decide who you are in it. Even if you fall, you can still reign.”

Her pen moved again, reshaping the letters, curling them into a new form.

I am Lord Voldemort

“It’s French,” she said, tapping the ink with the pen. “Vol de mort. Flight of death. Or theft of death, depending on how you take it. I thought it was fitting.”

She turned the journal toward him. “So you’re Tom. My Tom. And when the darkness comes… that’s Lord Voldemort.”

Tom let out a soft, almost bitter laugh.

“I’m serious,” Aurelia insisted, nudging his knee. “If you treat it like a thing that lives beside you instead of inside you, maybe it won’t take over. You’re still Tom. My Tom. Voldemort is just… what happens when the world forgets to be kind.”

She stood then, brushing the skirt of her dress smooth. “I have to go. Miss Everly wants to change my bandages before bed.”

She lingered at the door. “Good night, Tom. Just promise me you’ll think about it. You’re not the villain you think you have to be.”

He watched her. “And what if naming it only gives it more power?”

She offered a warm smile.

“Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself,” she said before slipping back into the hall. 

Tom sat still for a moment, staring down at the small book in his lap. He ran a hand along the spine, then flipped it over.

At the bottom, pressed into the back cover in gold lettering, were the words:

Tom Marvolo Riddle

He traced the letters with the edge of his thumb, then opened the notebook again, letting the first page rest open on his knees. The name she had written stared back at him like a prophecy:

I am Lord Voldemort

Chapter Text

Wool’s Orphanage, London — July 30, 1938

The old piano in the music room wheezed with each key press, its ivory yellowed like aged teeth. 

Aurelia’s fingers fumbled clumsily over the keys, producing a melody so uneven Tom had to resist the urge to wince. The notes came stilted, each one slightly off-pitch, as if the instrument were protesting her inexperience.

“No—slower,” he said, leaning in to guide her hands across the opening bars of I’ll See You in My Dreams. But her fingers stumbled again, hitting two wrong notes in a row.

Aurelia huffed in frustration, her curls bouncing as she shook her head. 

“No wonder you play so beautifully. Look at these.” She reached down and lifted his hand from the keys, pressing it gently to hers. Palm to palm. Her fingers barely reached halfway up his.

Her big amber eyes looked up at him. “Yours are so long and graceful. Like elegant spider legs.”

That earned the smallest curve of a smile from him.

“Spider legs? Charming. I will assume that’s a compliment to my grace and architectural prowess.” Tom teased.

She groaned dramatically, letting her hand fall to her lap. 

“You know what I mean. They are perfect for piano. Mine are too… stubby.” She glanced at him sideways. “Besides, I’m more of a dancer anyway.”

Tom raised a skeptical but amused brow. “A dancer?”

“Yes, a dancer,” she said playfully, turning on the bench to face him fully. “My mum, she would put the gramophone on and twirl me around our kitchen until my head spun. I thought one day I would be one of those girls who dance under grand chandeliers, in silk gowns, with the whole room watching.” She gave a small, self-deprecating smile. “Instead… I got Wool’s and a piano that sounds like it’s drowning.”

Tom studied her face—the way her eyes grew distant with memory, the slight downturn of her mouth. 

A warmth crept into his chest, the kind he only ever felt when he was near her. It caught him off guard.

“Well then,” he said. “Go on. Dance.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, half-smiling. “What?”

He gestured to the small, dusty music room with its sun-bleached walls and single grimy window. 

“Show me.”

Aurelia gave him a skeptical look before sliding off the bench. 

Tom’s fingers found the keys, and the opening notes of Moonlight Sonata filled the room.

The melody was hauntingly beautiful, each note perfectly placed, the music flowing from his hands like water. It was somber and ethereal, ominous in contrast to the morning light that spilled through the window, catching the golden-brown strands of her hair and making them shine like burnished copper.

At the first familiar notes, Aurelia’s uncertainty melted away. 

She began to move, slowly at first, her arms extended gracefully as she turned in gentle circles. Her skirt flared around her legs as she spun, faster now, her face tilted upward as if chasing a memory, or maybe a future only she could see. 

She was radiant—completely swept away by the music, the dream Tom shaped for her with every carefully played note.

Tom could have played forever, watching her face light up with pure wonder—as if this room, this single instant, contained her entire world. Here, Wool’s ceased to exist. Here, she had already transformed into the person she was always meant to become. 

Here, in this forgotten room, she was the girl in the ballroom, the one everyone stopped to watch.

When the last notes of the Sonata faded, Tom immediately launched into something different—the playful, clunky opening of In the Hall of the Mountain King.

Aurelia laughed, a bright sound that filled the dusty corners, and began dancing in an entirely different manner. 

Where before she had been graceful, now she was silly, her movements exaggerated and theatrical. She spun wildly, arms flailing, as Tom played the familiar melody faster and faster, his fingers dancing across the keys with increasing tempo.

She giggled breathlessly, stumbling slightly as the dizziness took hold, but she didn’t stop spinning. Tom was certain she would topple over at any moment, but she seemed determined to match the frantic pace of his playing.

And then suddenly, the door opened.

Tom’s fingers crashed down on the keys all at once in a violent, discordant chord.

Aurelia stopped mid-spin, her skirt still catching the air.

In the doorway stood Mrs. Everly.

Her eyes moved between the two of them—first Aurelia, flushed and breathless in the middle of the room, then Tom, his hands still frozen over the keys.

“Tom,” she said evenly, “someone’s here to see you.”

He glanced at Aurelia, who had folded her arms and looked worried. Then turned back to the door.

Tom followed her into the hall, their steps stirring the silence that clung to the tired linoleum. They moved quietly towards the boys’ wing, passing familiar landmarks of cracked paint and water-stained walls. 

As they rounded the corner near the main staircase, Tom spotted a familiar figure.

Mr. Fletcher stood with his hands clasped behind his back, flanked by two other local officials in their standard grey suits and tired expressions. Tom knew the man only ever appeared at Wool’s for one of two reasons: someone was coming, or someone was going. 

But none of them so much as glanced at Tom as he passed.

For any other child, these men might represent salvation—a ticket out, a fresh start, a family waiting somewhere beyond these walls. But Tom had long since accepted a bitter truth: for him, that door would never open. Some children were simply meant to remain forgotten.

If they weren’t here for him, then who were they here for? And who was here to see him?

“Do you know who is here to see me?” Tom asked, glancing at Miss Everly for the first time since they had left the music room.

Where moments before she had seemed merely concerned, now she looked genuinely angry. Her jaw was tight, her eyes hard in a way Tom had never seen before. She knew something—something that made her furious.

She didn’t look at him. “No,” she said curtly.

It was a lie. And a poor one.

She knew exactly who it was. And she hated that they were here.

They reached the end of the hall and stopped outside his door. Miss Everly opened it for him. He stepped inside. When he turned to ask another question, she was already gone, the door clicking shut behind her.

He began running through the possibilities. 

When Mrs. Cole had threatened him weeks ago with a letter to a psychiatrist—Dr. Aldous Whitman—Tom had taken matters into his own hands. He had waited until the orphanage settled into its nightly stupor, then slipped into her office under cover of darkness. The letter had been easy enough to find in the outgoing mail pile, and even easier to destroy.

It had been necessary. Tom had read enough, understood enough, to know what men like Dr. Whitman did to children they deemed “disturbed.” The treatments, the institutions, the methods designed to break minds that didn’t conform to their narrow definitions of normal.

No. He would burn this place to the ground before he let that happen.

The letter now lay hidden beneath his mattress, along with other small tokens of his growing influence over his own fate. Mrs. Cole could threaten all she liked—but Tom Riddle would never be at anyone’s mercy again.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Tom slowly rolled his neck, shoulder to shoulder.

He needed to get control of his thoughts. Push them down before they started to climb up his throat.

Reaching over to his desk, he grabbed The Winter’s Tale.  

The play was about loss. About rebirth. About things you thought were gone forever coming back when you least expected.

Shakespeare had always appealed to him; there was something deeply satisfying about the way the Bard wove power and manipulation through poetry, the way his characters schemed and plotted with such elegant cruelty. 

Beauty, yes—but also something darker. Something that turned men into monsters, or kings into fools. The way a word could damn you. Or crown you.

The language felt familiar on his tongue, like a native dialect he had been born understanding.

Tom opened to where he had left off, but the words swam before his eyes. 

His mind was elsewhere, preparing for whatever was about to walk through his door.

Suddenly, Tom could hear Mrs. Cole’s voice echoing down the hall.

“I must admit to some confusion upon receiving your letter, Mr. Dumbledore. In all the years Tom’s been here, he’s never once had a family visitor.”

She lowered her voice. “There have been incidents with the other children… nasty things…”

A firm knock sounded twice at the door before it opened.

“Tom, you have a visitor,” Mrs. Cole announced, letting the man into the room.

The man who stepped through the door looked completely out of place. His long auburn hair and beard, paired with a flamboyant plum velvet suit, made him look as though he had stepped out of an entirely different world. 

“How do you do, Tom?” the man said, his voice smooth but laced with a gleam in his eyes that didn’t sit well with Tom. There was pity in them—Tom could see it clearly. And he hated being pitied.

The man’s eyes moved around the small room, taking everything in. The shells neatly lined along the windowsill. The photograph of the cave taped next to the window. The Winter's Tale lying closed on his neatly made bed. His gaze finally returned to Tom.

Tom didn’t answer. He only stared, assessing. The man held out a hand in greeting, and after a moment’s pause, Tom took it.

The man pulled out the wooden chair from Tom’s desk, turning it to face him like a doctor preparing to examine a patient.

“You’re the doctor, aren’t you?”

“No,” the man said with a small smile. “I’m Professor Dumbledore.”

Professor. The word clicked strangely in Tom’s mind. Not a doctor, then. A teacher? Some kind of official? Maybe a specialist?

“Professor?” Tom repeated. “I don’t believe you. She wants me looked at. They think I’m different.”

Tom looked between him and the door, the one Mrs. Cole had just left through.

“Well,” Dumbledore said calmly, “perhaps they’re right.”

“I’m not mad.”

“No, no,” Dumbledore assured him, still smiling, but with a seriousness underneath. “Hogwarts is not a place for mad people. Hogwarts is a school. A school of magic.”

There was silence. Tom had frozen, his face expressionless, but his eyes were flicking back and forth between each of Dumbledore’s, as though trying to catch one of them lying.

“You can do things, can’t you, Tom? Things that other children can’t?”

Tom didn’t answer. He thought of the things he had made happen. The way he could make people hurt. The way things bent when he wanted them to. Dumbledore was still watching him closely. It was as if he already knew. As if he read his mind.

Dumbledore continued, the smile now gone from his face. “You are a wizard.”

Tom wondered what else he had seen within his mind. Had he glimpsed the cave? The boys? The darkness that coiled beneath his skin like a living thing?

Tom lifted his head. “Who are you?”

“I’m like you, Tom,” Dumbledore said quietly. “I’m different.”

“Prove it.”

Without the wizard looking, Tom’s wardrobe went up in flames.

“I think there’s something in your wardrobe trying to get out, Tom.”

Tom quickly crossed the room, yanked the door open, and pulled out the metal tin tucked inside. He dumped its contents onto the bed: trinkets, small stolen trophies from the other boys. A yoyo. A silver thimble. A harmonica. 

“Thievery is not tolerated at Hogwarts, Tom,” Dumbledore said. “At Hogwarts, you’ll be taught not only how to use magic… but how to control it. Do you understand me?”

Tom’s mind raced. Control— that was what he wanted most. Not to suppress his power, but to master it completely. To harness the darkness that lived within him and make it truly his own. His pulse quickened at the thought of learning proper magic, real magic, beyond the crude manipulations he had discovered on his own.

Perhaps even how to shape that dark, roaring thing inside him into something more.

Tom listened with a careful awe, as if every sentence were a thread wound into a map of new possibilities. His world had always been enclosed and brittle; Hogwarts promised a doorway into a much larger, darker, more dazzling darkness—and Tom wanted in.

He spoke of enchanted staircases and floating candles, of houses named after founders long dead, of classes that taught everything from potions to transfiguration. There would be uniforms, wands, owls delivering post—quills instead of pens, parchment instead of paper. 

Tom listened with rapt attention, his dark eyes drinking in every word. Magic had a school. There were others like him. He would learn to control what he could do, understand it, master it. He was determined to get his books as soon as possible and be more prepared than any other student who had ever walked through those castle doors.

When Dumbledore finally stood up to make his way to the door, Tom felt a strange reluctance to see him leave. The professor paused, his hand on the doorknob, before turning around. He pulled a small leather pouch from inside his jacket and handed it to Tom.

Tom looked down at it, his fingers working at the drawstring. The pouch opened with a soft whisper of leather, revealing the gleam of golden coins inside. He lifted one carefully. It was heavier than he expected, with strange markings he couldn’t read. 

Dumbledore had turned and was heading back toward the door when Tom’s voice stopped him.

“I can speak to snakes too.” The words came out in a rush, as though he had been holding them back the entire conversation. “They find me. Whisper things. Is that normal… for someone like me?”

Dumbledore turned around slowly, his blue eyes settling on Tom with an intensity that made the boy’s skin prickle. But there was no shock in that gaze—instead, it was the look of someone who had just had a long-held suspicion confirmed, a missing piece of a puzzle clicking into place.

“Yes,” Dumbledore said, nodding thoughtfully. “Yes… it can be. 

Tom considered this. He wanted to trust—wanted to believe that belonging wouldn’t demand the erasure of the dark edges inside him. The possibility that his talents could be guided, shaped, even used for something bigger than fear or punishment called to him with a ferocity he had learned to restrain.

Dumbledore stepped closer again, as if confiding a secret. “In the world you come from, many things seem impossible until they aren’t. Some minds hear voices others don’t. Some tongues listen where others only hear silence. If you are hearing whispers from serpents, it could be a sign of… sensitivity. Or something more, if you choose to let it be.”

Tom’s jaw tightened, then loosened into a rare, almost tentative smile.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, his voice laced with awe and calculation.

He paused, studying Tom’s face for a moment longer. “I will see you at Hogwarts, Tom.”

Tom watched as Dumbledore disappeared through the doorway, the relentless ticking of his clock suddenly thunderous in the silence. He remained motionless, staring at the empty threshold long after the professor’s measured footsteps had faded down the corridor.

A magical school. 

Tom couldn’t decide whether to trust the peculiar man, but the opportunity blazed before him like a beacon. If there was even the chance he could learn to master the power that coursed through his veins—to harness and control the darkness that lived inside him, to bend it to his will and forge it into something magnificent—then he would seize it without hesitation.

He would be able to leave this place and experience the magical world Aurelia had told him about firsthand. A chance to be with his kind. 

But what of Aurelia? The thought struck him like cold water. 

He wanted to tell Aurelia. Hurrying down the wing toward the opposite end of the orphanage, he felt something close to happiness flaring in his chest. He ran his hand along the wall, letting it click as a smile broke across his face. 

His face fell and his brows furrowed when he heard laughter spilling from her room. He stood outside her door where warm light was spilling from beneath it. He peaked inside to see Aurelia giggling with a woman who was finely dressed in deep blue velvet, and an older man who stood behind the woman making Aurelia’s stuffed pink bunny dance in a silly way, his voice pitched high as he gave it a squeaky voice.

Tom knew then what Mr. Cresswell had been doing there earlier. He was right in his assumption that he hadn’t been there to see him. He was there for Aurelia.

Tom listened to the man talk for a few more minutes about all of the things they had—”a large yard with a Golden Retriever named Honey,” he was saying, “and three horses where you could ride whenever you wanted to. There’s a pond for swimming in the summer, and your own room with windows that look out over the garden...”

The woman’s voice wove through the air like silk ribbon, painting pictures of Sunday mornings and birthday parties, of bedtime stories and goodnight kisses. She spoke of a daughter’s room already waiting—yellow walls the color of sunshine, shelves for books and treasures, a rocking chair where she could read by the window.

“We’ve been hoping for someone just like you,” the woman said, reaching out to tuck a strand of Aurelia’s hair behind her ear with the gentle touch of someone who already loved her. “A little girl to make our house a home.”

Tom’s chest tightened as he watched Aurelia’s face transform with wonder, her eyes wide as saucers reflecting all the beautiful tomorrows being offered to her. She nodded eagerly at every promise, every dream they laid at her feet like flower petals.

She looked happier than he had ever seen her, her eyes bright with dreams of a future that didn’t include the cold, gray walls of the orphanage—a future that didn’t include him.

But it was when the woman pulled out a small velvet box that Tom’s world tilted on its axis. Inside lay a delicate gold locket, heart-shaped and gleaming in the lamplight.

“This was my grandmother’s,” the woman whispered, fastening it around Aurelia’s neck with reverent fingers. “And now it’s yours. You’re going to be our daughter, Aurelia. Our forever daughter.”

The word ‘daughter’ echoed in Tom’s mind. Not a temporary placement. Not a trial period. A daughter. Permanent. Forever.

Aurelia’s delighted squeals of joy felt like knives in Tom’s chest.

He pressed himself closer to the doorframe, watching as Aurelia threw her arms around the woman’s neck in an impulsive hug. The couple exchanged a look over her head—pure, uncomplicated joy at having found their child at last.

Tom retreated down the corridor like a ghost, the euphoria that had lifted him mere moments before curdling into something venomous and arctic. Each step echoed with bitter finality.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Chapter Text

Wool’s Orphanage, London — July 31, 1938

Tom sank into his usual spot beneath the old oak tree, its shade a welcome escape from what had to be the brightest sun London had seen in months. He didn’t mind, though. After last night, he was in an unusually pleasant mood.

The courtyard was quiet, save for the boys clustered on the far end. Ever since the incident in the cave, they had kept their distance. No name-calling. Just nervous glances and sudden silences whenever he passed. It was… refreshing.

He turned a page, savoring the stillness.

Aurelia hadn’t come outside yet. He knew she was still inside with Mrs. Cole, enduring one of her so-called lessons—a drawn-out ritual in posture, elocution, and other proper-lady nonsense that could stretch on for what felt like hours, thanks to the woman’s relentless dedication to domestic refinement.

Tom had just settled deeper into his reading when a whisper drifted from somewhere behind him.

He looked up, scanning the empty courtyard, then rose to his feet, clutching his book at his side. Moving around the ancient tree, his gaze was drawn to a figure standing between the black iron bars of the gate. A dark-haired woman whose very presence was unnerving against the shadows. 

Tom glanced around the courtyard, ensuring no one was watching, before approaching the gate. The woman beckoned him closer with a fluid, almost serpentine gesture.

She possessed an exotic beauty with eyes dark as a viper’s, gleaming like polished obsidian. Her clothing was utterly foreign, draped and layered in fabrics that seemed reminiscent of fortune tellers and traveling performers who dealt in mysteries and ancient secrets. 

Where Dumbledore’s robes had projected scholarly authority and institutional respectability, this woman’s attire spoke of hidden knowledge, of magic that existed in shadows and whispered prophecies.

Her expression was troubled as her gaze swept over him, taking in every detail with obvious concern.

“You need to listen to me, Tom Riddle,” she said, her voice carrying an urgency that made his pulse quicken. “You need to stay away from him.”

“Stay away from who?” Tom demanded.

She didn’t answer, instead pressing on with mounting desperation.

“He’s not what he seems. He wants your magic. And he will take you with it.”

Tom’s blood ran a little colder. The hairs on his arms stood.

He felt his jaw tighten.

“Dumbledore?” Tom interrupted.

Her eyes darted nervously over his shoulder before snapping back to his face, and in their depths he saw something that chilled him more than her words—genuine terror.

“You need to stay safe. He’s going to come for you.”

Tom took another step forward. His fingers curling tightly around the cold iron. 

Frustration flared hot in Tom’s chest. He wanted to reach through those bars, to grab this woman and drag every secret from her lips by force. The urge to make her talk, to extract every secret through whatever means necessary, burned in his chest.

His magic stirred restlessly beneath his skin, eager to be unleashed, to bend her will to his until she had no choice but to tell him everything he demanded to know.

“Tom?”

Aurelia’s voice cut through his dark thoughts. He turned to see her approaching across the courtyard, her braided hair catching the unusual sunlight. When he looked back to the gate, the woman had vanished. 

In her place, a large snake was slithering along the base of the iron bars, disappearing into the shadows of the side alley.

“Who were you speaking with?”

Tom remained silent, watching until the last coil of the serpent vanished from sight. His jaw clenched as the woman’s words echoed in his mind.

Aurelia reached his side, her concern deepening at his obvious distress. She grasped his arm, gently pulling him away from the bars to face her fully.

She searched his face.

“Were you speaking to that snake just now?” she asked. “It sounded like… well, like you were hissing.”

Tom met her gaze, his face carefully blank as he pushed back all of his churning thoughts. The frustration. The questions. The growing sense that something important had just slipped through his fingers.

“It was nothing,” he said, pushing past her. 

Tom didn’t look at her as he began to make his way back into the building. The sky was darkening ominously, massive storm clouds rolling toward Wool’s with an almost supernatural intensity. There was something macabre in the way they twisted and writhed across the heavens, devouring what remained of the pale London sun like some ravenous beast.

Aurelia followed him silently.

The wind lashed at Tom’s face and tore through his dark hair with vicious intensity, growing more violent with each step he took. He finally reached the entrance, pulling open the heavy door that protested with a deep, resonant groan before slamming shut behind him, sealing out the brewing tempest that seemed to echo the dark thoughts in his mind.

Tom turned sharply down the hall, making his way to his room with purposeful strides. Aurelia stayed close behind, closing the door softly once they were both inside.

“What’s the matter, Tom?” she asked gently.

Tom positioned himself by the window, watching as the first fat raindrops began to pelt the grimy glass. He didn’t turn to face her when he spoke. 

“Who came to visit you yesterday?”

The silence stretched between them for several heartbeats before she answered.

“An adoptive family.”

Tom’s jaw tightened at the confirmation.

“And what did you think of them?”

Aurelia gave him a look filled with sadness. “They are a kind family, Tom. They could give me a good life.”

She paused, her fingers nervously twisting together. 

“But the wife returned this morning to have another discussion with Miss Cole,” Aurelia said. “Apparently, there’s been a… complication—her husband is reconsidering the arrangement. He’s developed concerns about the adoption.” She paused, “About taking me in, specifically.”

She, of course, would never see them again.

After they had left her room last night, Tom had followed them as they departed the orphanage and done what he had to do. She would have her backyard and golden retriever and happiness —but he would be the one to give it to her. No one else.

Aurelia sat on the edge of his bed, smoothing the fabric of her skirt. “You’re not angry at me for not telling you, are you?”

 Tom turned slowly to face her. He smiled. Almost kindly. “Of course not.”

She reached for the small leather-bound diary sitting on his bed, flipping through the pages absently, looking at the notes he had made.

“So,” she said, not looking up, “are you going to tell me what that snake was hissing at you out there?”

Tom moved to sit beside her.

“I think it has something to do with my meeting yesterday,” he said, as the storm groaned low in the walls. 

“And what exactly happened in the meeting?”

Tom studied her face before answering. 

“A professor named Dumbledore came to invite me to attend a school called Hogwarts.”

She finally looked up from the diary, her eyebrows pulling together in confusion.

Tom continued, his voice gaining momentum.

“It’s a magical school—for children like us. They teach us how to use it properly, how to control it.”

He leaned forward slightly, eyes brightening.

“They divide students into Houses,” Tom said, his voice carrying a note of calculated interest. “Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each claims to value different qualities.” His eyes darkened with something like hunger. “Slytherin takes the ones who are clever, ambitious… powerful. That’s what Dumbledore said.”

A flicker of pride crossed his face.

“I knew right away. That’s where I belong.”

Outside, the storm intensified. Rain lashed against the window like it was trying to claw its way in, and thunder rolled low and steady, a warning growl just beneath his words. 

“There’s a place called Diagon Alley,” Tom continued, his voice dropping to an almost reverent whisper. “A street that exists beyond the reach of muggles, where real magic is bought and sold. Wands crafted from cores of powerful creatures, books that contain secrets ordinary people will never know exist, robes that mark you as something far above the rest.” He paused, savoring the words. “Shops lined with potions that could bend minds, artifacts that hold genuine power. Things that could make us more than what we are.”

Aurelia looked at him then, a slow smile blooming like sunlight through the clouds. She was happy for him.

“When you turn eleven, they send you a letter,” he said, as if he were already orchestrating the future. “You will come with me next year. We will go together.”

Aurelia looked down. “I—I don’t think I can.”

“Of course you can,” Tom said with absolute certainty.

Aurelia shook her head slowly. “No, Tom. Magic has a very specific birth registration system. When a magical child is born, the school local to your region automatically detects your magical core—it’s all documented and tracked. Mine would have been registered with Durmstrang, which is the primary magical school for Bulgaria and Eastern Europe.” She paused, her voice becoming more hesitant. “But my mum... she made it very clear that I was never supposed to attend. Ever.”

Tom felt a sudden surge of anger at the unfairness of it all, his jaw tightening as he processed her words. After a moment, he reached for her hand, and she blushed at the unexpected contact.

“Then we will find a way around it,” he said with quiet determination, his voice carrying that familiar edge of absolute certainty. “I will speak to Dumbledore this year. There has to be a solution.” His grip on her hand tightened slightly. “We can be in Slytherin together.”

Aurelia tilted her head slightly, her brow furrowing with that familiar determination to get to the bottom of things. “But that still doesn’t answer my question—what exactly did the snake say to you?”

Tom didn’t really understand it either, and the confusion gnawed at him.

“It was a woman,” he said with deliberate slowness, choosing each word carefully. “She warned me to stay away from someone. She said he would use me and exploit my magic for his own purposes.”

Aurelia’s eyes widened, just slightly. “Do you think she was talking about Professor Dumbledore?”

Tom’s jaw worked thoughtfully, his mind turning over possibilities like pieces on a chessboard. “Perhaps. Though he presented himself as merely a professor.” His gaze sharpened on her face. “You wouldn’t happen to know who else might fit that description, would you?”

Aurelia looked away, her fingers worrying at the edge of the diary. “I... I’m not entirely certain, Tom.”

Tom watched her carefully, sensing there was more she wasn’t saying.

“I don’t want you to leave,” she whispered, finally meeting his eyes again.

“You will join me next year,” Tom assured her. 

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

 The words fell from his lips like a sacred vow, binding him to her in ways he didn’t fully understand but felt in every fiber of his being.

Her smile bloomed and she threw her arms around him with such trust, such complete faith, that something in his chest cracked open. The rose-water scent of her hair enveloped him like a benediction, and he wondered how he had ever existed without this. Without her.

He shifted to sit with his back against the wall, and she followed as if drawn by invisible threads. His fingers found the loose curly strands that had escaped her braid, threading through them with the reverence of someone touching something holy.

In this moment, Tom Riddle was purely, incandescently happy. The boy who had never believed in happiness, who had been carved from loneliness and sharpened by abandonment, held the entire world in his hands. She was his salvation and his damnation, the single thread of light woven through the darkness of his existence. 

Soon they would walk together through castle halls filled with others like them, but even surrounded by magic and wonder, nothing would ever compare to this. To someone choosing him, believing in him, accepting him despite everything he was and everything he would become.

They watched the storm paint fury across the windows, rain streaming down glass like the tears of angry gods, but inside their small sanctuary, there was only peace. 

Tom felt the weight of something rising in him. A strange and unfamiliar loyalty.

He wanted to tell her about the secret he had guarded so carefully—the one thing he had never shared with anyone. Not even with her.

“I want to show you something.”

He stood and walked to the corner of his room. Beneath his desk, there was a loose floorboard he had carefully pried up months ago. He moved the chair aside and pulled the board free, revealing a small box nestled in the hollow underneath.

Aurelia followed and sat in front of him on the floor, tucking her legs beneath her.

Tom lifted the box into his lap.

“Dumbledore isn’t the only wizard who has sought me out,” Tom began, his voice taking on that careful, measured tone he used when revealing something significant. “Miss Everly came to fetch me one night—dragged me from my bed, claiming someone of significance was waiting for me. For a moment, I allowed myself to believe it might be family. Perhaps even my father, finally come to claim me.” His lips curved in a bitter smile. “She escorted me to a park, then abandoned me to meet this... man.”

Tom’s voice dropped to something almost hypnotic. “He wore black robes and had an accent that suggested refinement— European, cultured. There was power radiating from him, the kind that calls to those who understand its true value. He knew things about me, about what I was capable of.” His eyes glittered with something hungry. “He claimed to have known my mother, said she had entrusted him with my welfare. I thought he might finally offer me what I deserved—a place worthy of my abilities. Instead, he insisted I remain in this place.”

Tom opened the box.

“He bestowed this upon me, insisting it was my birthright. My mother’s final gift to ensure I would never forget what I am destined to become.” The words dripped with the certainty of someone who believed himself chosen by fate itself.

He pulled out a round golden locket, holding it up so the pendant could catch what little light filtered through the storm-darkened window. 

Along the edge, barely visible unless tilted to the light, ran inscriptions:

“Fatae non paciscuntur.” — Th e Fates do not bargain . And “Tempus dominatur.” — Time is the master .

“The man has visited only a handful of times over the years, and each time, Miss Everly escorts me to that same park.” Tom explained.

Aurelia carefully accepted the locket, her analytical mind immediately cataloguing every detail. Her fingers tracing the engravings before she slowly opened it. 

Inside, instead of a photo or a lock of hair, there were three miniature dials inlaid with intricate runes and symbols. They ticked faintly, never aligning in a way that made sense.

“I have attempted to decipher the dials’ purpose countless times,” Tom admitted, as he watched her examine each mechanism with the methodical attention he had come to expect from her. “Every logical approach has failed.”

His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

The storm outside intensified, as if responding to the revelation of this long-held secret, thunder rolling across the London sky.

“Did the man ever tell you his name?”

“No.” Tom replied. “He said it was because the matron mustn’t find out. But he looks the part of a real wizard. He has white hair and startling eyes—one white as bone, the other dark as ink.”

Aurelia’s head snapped up. Her eyes locked with his, wide in alarm.

Tom’s brow furrowed. “What is it?”

Aurelia’s gaze dropped back to the locket, and without warning, the dials erupted into frenzied motion. They spun wildly, faster and faster, producing a mechanical ticking that crescendoed with each rotation.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

A thunderous pounding exploded against the door—so violent the wood groaned under the assault. The storm outside transformed into something preternatural, wind howling with a fury that seemed to shake the very bones of Wool’s Orphanage. The lights convulsed erratically—blazing, dying, blazing again—throwing manic shadows that danced across the walls like demons.

Tom and Aurelia looked at each other in terror, and suddenly the locket began to glow with a brilliant light as bright as the sun itself. Tom threw his arm across his eyes, the radiance searing even through his closed lids.

The air itself seemed to tear, reality ripping like fabric as the locket carved a wound through the veil of time. Aurelia’s scream was lost in the cosmic shriek of temporal displacement as she was pulled forward, her form stretching and distorting before vanishing completely into the blazing rift that snapped shut with the finality of thunder.

 Darkness crashed down. The light died. The power failed. Tom was left alone in the sudden, terrible stillness of his dim room.

He rose slowly, his eyes scanning the space that moments before had contained the only person he had ever cared about.

“Aurelia?” he whispered, then louder, “Aurelia!”

His heart pounded so fiercely in his chest he thought it might tear itself apart, looking frantically around the empty space. He rushed to the door, yanking at the handle, but it seemed locked. He pulled again with desperate strength until it finally gave way.

Outside, Miss Everly lay crumpled against the wall, her body unnaturally still.

Tom took off running toward Aurelia’s room, taking the stairs three at a time. “Aurelia!” he shouted, his voice cracking with panic. He yanked open her door so hard it slammed against the wall.

“Aurelia!” he screamed into the empty room.

No.

His breath caught.

No. No. No.

All that remained was her pink stuffed bunny, sitting forlorn on the carefully made bed.

He stood frozen in disbelief. She couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t.

Tom ran down the stairs toward the courtyard door, his shouts echoing through the eerily silent halls. Lightning flashed, illuminating the corridor in brief, blinding bursts. He burst outside into the storm, the pouring rain instantly soaking through his clothes to the skin.

In the center of the courtyard, his legs gave out. Tom Riddle—who would one day become a name the world feared, the villain who would never kneel to anyone or anything—collapsed to the unforgiving ground. 

And screamed.

A guttural, raw sound ripped from his chest—a sound born of grief and rage and something blacker than either.

He began to pound his fists against the cobblestones. “You promised!” he cried out to the empty sky. “You promised!” His fists split and bled with the force of his blows, striking again and again until the rain turned pink as it streamed down his arms.

Finally, he dropped his forehead to the ground, sobbing as the salt of his tears mingled with the rain, creating tiny rivers of grief that dripped from his face like liquid sorrow.

He remained there, broken and weeping, until suddenly his sobs ceased. His face went completely blank, his breathing perfectly even despite the storm raging around him. Slowly, he raised his head from the ground, his expression utterly empty as he stared into the void of nothingness before him.

Tom Riddle had lost his light, and with it, that essential part of himself that made him human.

Gone was Tom Riddle, and what remained was a boy destined to make all the wrong choices.

All he could feel now was anger. There was no existence where he wasn’t consumed by it. He had never cared for anything other than her. And now she was gone.

The darkness inside him, once held back by her presence, was suddenly unleashed without restraint.

And everything went black.

Chapter Text

The Ruins of Wool’s Orphanage, London — July 31, 1990

There was only searing white light and the molten agony radiating from Aurelia’s hands where they still clutched the locket. She feared that if she released it, she would dissolve into the howling void of nothingness. Time became meaningless—she could have existed in this torment for millennia or mere heartbeats. Here, neither time nor flesh had substance. Was this death? Some liminal space between worlds?

She was screaming, but the sound was swallowed by the deafening ring that filled her skull. Then suddenly the light collapsed inward on itself, and she was thrown back into blessed darkness, her senses reeling from the violent transition.

Her ears were still ringing and dizziness overtook her, but slowly the world around her started coming into focus as her vision began to clear. She blinked hard, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

She looked down to where she still clutched the locket tightly in her hands. Her skin bore severe burns where she had gripped it, the flesh angry and blistered. Wincing, she forced herself to look up and her heart shattered.

Nothing but rubble stretched before her. The skeletal remains of what had once been Wool’s Orphanage lay scattered across the courtyard.

“Tom!” Aurelia pushed herself up, her voice hoarse as she called out. She scrambled down from the debris, calling for him again, her voice breaking. “Tom!”

The sobs started then, wracking her body as the terrible reality began to sink in. She staggered to the middle of what had once been the courtyard and let out a wailed sob when she realized that Wool’s Orphanage was in ruins.

Passersby were gathering now, drawn by her frantic state. She looked around, frightened by how oddly they were all dressed. Their clothes seemed wrong somehow, unfamiliar in cut and style.

A woman hurried over to her. “Are you alright, miss? Are you lost?”

But Aurelia was too frantic, looking around wildly at the destruction, at the strange faces, at the world that had become alien to her.

Suddenly there were loud cracks echoing through the air, and wizards started appearing around the ruined courtyard. They had their wands drawn, and the civilians started gasping in shock at the people who had just appeared before them.

“Ministry of Magic!” one of the dark-robed men announced in a commanding voice. “We mean no harm!”

Terror shot through Aurelia’s veins. She grabbed her dress and began to push past the gathering crowd, running away from the wizards, the locket still clutched tightly in her burned hand. She ran wildly, her dark curls whipping free from her braid as she made her way down the street, shoving past startled pedestrians.

“Stupefy!”

The spell struck her between the shoulder blades, and darkness claimed her before she hit the unforgiving ground.

The sound of distant voices stirred her from unconsciousness. A splitting headache pounded behind her eyes as she struggled to focus, her vision swimming as she took in her unfamiliar surroundings.

Aurelia looked down to see two women in green robes casting diagnostic spells across her midsection, their wands tracing intricate patterns that glowed before fading. “Vitals are stable, magical core intact—physically she’s in excellent condition, poor dear,” one of them murmured to her companion, consulting a floating chart that materialized beside the bed. “Though I must say, her magical core is remarkably powerful for someone so young.”

Aurelia stirred, and the woman moved to hand her a glass of water. She took a tentative sip, her throat raw, as she continued looking around the strange room. The space was pristine white with tall windows that let in afternoon light.

“Where am I exactly?” Aurelia asked.

The woman furrowed her brows, studying Aurelia with professional concern. “You’ve suffered quite a severe head trauma. It’s not uncommon for patients to experience disorientation and memory gaps after such an incident.”

“Wh—what year is it?” 

The healers exchanged a concerned glance with each other before responding in a gentle, clinical tone, “It’s 1990, dear. You’ve been unconscious for several hours. Memory confusion is quite normal after head injuries of this severity.”

Aurelia bolted upright, her heart hammering so violently she could feel it in her throat. Fifty years. The locket had catapulted her fifty years into the future, to the bombed-out remains of Wool’s Orphanage. And Tom—dear God, Tom was still back there in 1940, alone and abandoned. She had sworn she would never leave him, had promised with everything in her that they would face whatever came together. Now an entire lifetime stretched between them, and she was powerless to bridge it.

Her head began to spin again, and the Healer moved quickly to ease her back down onto the pillows. “Easy now, you need to rest.”

But Aurelia’s spiraling thoughts were interrupted when the door opened.

The Healers in green robes straightened respectfully. “Minister Fudge, Professor Dumbledore,” One of the healers greeted them professionally. “The patient has just regained consciousness. It’s a miracle you found the poor thing. All diagnostic spells show she’s in excellent physical condition, though she’s exhibiting signs of temporal disorientation and acute anxiety. We’ve administered basic calming draughts, but she remains quite agitated.”

“If I may, Healer Matthews and Clearwater,” Dumbledore said with his characteristic gentle authority, “the Minister and I would very much appreciate a few moments alone with the young lady. There are certain... delicate matters we must discuss that require privacy.”

“Of course, headmaster Dumbeldore.”

One of the healers gently wiped Aurelia’s hair from her face before they both departed, leaving her alone with the two wizards.

Dumbledore approached the bedside, his hands clasped behind his back. “Good afternoon, my dear,” he said warmly, his blue eyes twinkling with what seemed like genuine kindness. “I do hope you are feeling somewhat better?”

Aurelia stared at him, uncertainty coiling in her stomach. She didn’t know where she was or who to trust in this strange new world.

He offered her a gentle smile, though she noticed it seemed somewhat reserved. “Perhaps we might begin with something simple? Would you be so kind as to tell us your name?”

Aurelia’s voice was cautious. “Can you tell me where I am?”

“St. Mungo’s,” he said patiently. “It is a hospital for sick magical people. Now, your name?”

She hesitated for a moment, then decided there was little point in lying about something so basic. “My name is Aurelia… Aurelia Wells.”

Dumbledore’s eyes sharpened almost imperceptibly. “Now, may I ask how you came about such a powerful magical object?”

Aurelia’s gaze dropped reflexively to her bandaged hands, and her heart lurched when she realized the locket was gone.

“Where is it?”

“I’m afraid we could not, in good conscience, allow you to retain such an object given the rather extraordinary circumstances,” Dumbledore said gravely. “Perhaps you might help us understand how this remarkable artifact came to be in your care?”

Aurelia remained silent, her jaw set stubbornly.

“This curious object,” Dumbledore pressed, stepping closer, “it carried you through time, did it not? I rather suspect that you are not originally from our present era?”

Again, she said nothing.

“Ah,” Dumbledore murmured with understanding, “I can see that silence feels like your safest refuge at the moment. How very wise of you, though I’m afraid it does complicate matters considerably.”

Aurelia remained silent, but her rapid breathing betrayed her panic.

“I want my locket back,” she said finally.

“I’m afraid that can’t happen.”

Anger flashed across Aurelia’s face. It was the only thing that could potentially bring her back to her time. Back to Tom.

Dumbledore’s voice grew firmer, though it maintained its deceptively gentle tone. “I need you to tell me where you came from, Miss Wells, or you will leave me no other choice but to find the information another way.”

Aurelia averted her gaze immediately, her mother’s solemn warnings resurging with crystal clarity: Never meet the eyes of a wizard you cannot trust, my darling. The mind’s defenses crumble beneath a direct gaze—thoughts, memories, even your deepest secrets become as transparent as glass to those who know how to look. Guard your eyes as you would guard your life, my little star.

Dumbledore moved closer, settling himself on the side of the bed. “Look at me, Miss Wells.”

“No,” Aurelia said firmly, pressing herself back against the pillows. “I don’t have to tell you anything. You can’t make me—”

Before she could even see him draw his wand, he whispered, “Petrificus Totalus.”

Her body seized instantly, every muscle locking in place as if invisible iron bands had clamped around her limbs. Only her eyes could move, wide with terror as her heart hammered against her ribs like a caged bird.

Dumbledore stood over her, his expression sorrowful but resolute. “Legilimens.”

No, no, no...

His presence invaded her mind like a gentle tide, knowing exactly where to flow. He moved through her consciousness easily, starting with her most recent memories—her time at Wool’s Orphanage, the cold dormitory, the institutional meals.

Then deeper, to the day her mother had deposited her at the orphanage in panicked haste, tears streaming down both their faces. Aurelia felt the abandonment fresh again, the crushing weight of being left behind.

Dumbledore pressed on, moving to memories of her meeting a black-haired boy named Tom Riddle. She watched helplessly as he witnessed their first conversation, Tom’s unusual intelligence, his quiet intensity. Then to her teaching him magic in the decaying halls as they washed floors together, sharing whispered secrets about what they could do. The memory of being pushed off a cliff, only to be saved by Tom. Him teaching her to play piano on the old, out-of-tune instrument in the music room. A vision of him reading a book. Then to the conversation they’d had just before she was sent forward—the one where Tom had spoken of who had come to visit him.

At that, Dumbledore’s mental touch shifted, diving deeper into memories so old they existed more as sensation than image. People were merely shapes; faces didn’t have features, leaving only the emotional imprints of fear and love and confusion.

A memory surfaced—herself as a very small child, hiding behind her mother’s skirts as something terrible happened just out of sight. Her mother’s hands shaking as she packed hastily in the dark, whispering urgent reassurances. The taste of her own terror, not understanding why they were running, why Mama was so frightened of the shadowy figure who had once made her smile.

More fragments emerged: always moving, never staying anywhere long, her mother constantly glancing over her shoulder as if expecting pursuit. The careful way her mother taught her to hide, to never show what she could do, to never trust too easily.

Her mother’s voice, desperate and broken: “He’s not the man I thought he was, little star. We have to go. We have to disappear before he becomes something terrible.”

The memories were fragmented, seen through the eyes of a toddler who understood fear but not its source.

The wizard’s presence pressed deeper, searching for something specific in those earliest, haziest memories—something her conscious mind had never quite grasped but that lingered in the shadows of her past like a half-remembered nightmare.

He pulled out of her mind abruptly, leaving her thoughts feeling raw and violated.

Dumbledore began to speak to another man who had entered the room. She could only hear his deep timber from where she lay paralyzed.

“It’s the girl, Severus,” Dumbledore said quietly.

“And what, precisely, do you propose we do with her?” the man called Severus asked. 

Dumbledore fell silent, seeming to weigh whatever course of action should be taken. When he spoke again, his words sent ice through Aurelia’s veins.

“I’m afraid sending her back through time is quite out of the question,” Dumbledore said thoughtfully. “The risks would be extraordinary—not merely to herself, but to the very fabric of time. Such magic exacts a terrible price.”  He paused, and she could hear him moving around the room. “However, the knowledge she carries presents us with an equally troubling dilemma. We simply cannot allow such information to exist freely in our world.”

Another pause stretched between them as he considered their limited choices.

“I believe it would be best to place her with an unsuspecting family, far from the wizarding world,” Dumbledore said, his tone almost reflective. “In time, Hogwarts will provide all the oversight she requires.”

“And you would entrust her to strangers?” Severus asked.

“She would be safest with a Muggle family,” Dumbledore replied. “A wizarding family would grow suspicious, ask too many questions, and look too closely at inconsistencies in her story.”

“Why not with someone we trust implicitly?”

“There are precious few I would burden with knowledge of this magnitude. Fewer still whose judgment is not clouded by sentiment. No—the fewer who know, the better.”

A pause. Then Severus asked the question that made Aurelia’s blood run cold: “And what of the girl’s memories?”

Dumbledore’s voice was filled with what sounded like genuine regret. “You know as well as I do, Severus. They must be altered. She must believe the life we choose for her. She cannot be allowed to remember.”

“You would strip her mind bare?” Severus said, and for the first time, there was a note of protest in his voice. “This borders on folly, Headmaster. Recklessness.”

“Recklessness would be to leave her as she is. She carries knowledge that cannot be permitted to run free. I will not gamble with that, Severus.” Dumbledore said simply, his tone brooking no argument. He stepped closer to Aurelia, studying her as though she were a curiosity in a glass case. Her tears slid silently, but his expression remained blank. “Remarkable.”

Then, he turned back to Severus, his robes whispering across the floor. “You are exceptionally skilled in memory modification. I will trust you to see to it while I confer with the Minister about her placement.”

Aurelia heard him make his way toward the door before pausing at the threshold.

“When you reconstruct her memories, Severus... give her the name Hermione.”

With that the door finally closed behind him. 

Footsteps moved around the bed, and a tall figure with long black hair took Dumbledore’s place at her bedside. 

Tears were now streaming down her cheeks in rivulets, her body wracked with silent sobs of terror and shock, but still unable to move. The paralysis made her feel like she was drowning in her own helplessness—they were erasing her very identity, yet somehow allowing her to keep the one thing that meant everything to her. 

The wizard pulled out his wand, pointing it at her temple with a steady hand. She could see the conflict in his dark eyes as he looked down at her, taking in her tears and the fear that must have been written across her face.

“Obliviate.”

And the world began to dissolve at the edges, memories bleeding away like watercolors in rain.

Hampstead Garden Suburb, London — August 25, 1991

Hermione sat cross-legged on her bed, afternoon sunlight streaming through the open window as she pored over her new Hogwarts textbooks. She still couldn’t quite believe it—she was a witch. Someone who could actually perform magic with a wand.

When Professor McGonagall had arrived at their home in those peculiar emerald robes, explaining that Hermione had been accepted to a school called Hogwarts, the entire family had been stunned into silence. Magic was real, and Hermione was part of it.

She had always known she was different. Friends had been nonexistent throughout her childhood—she was too bookish, too intense, too strange. But perhaps at Hogwarts, she wouldn’t be the odd one out anymore. 

She wouldn’t be a freak. 

After yesterday’s whirlwind trip to Diagon Alley for supplies, Hermione had stayed up reading until exhaustion claimed her, then woken at dawn to continue. There was an entire world of magic to understand, and she was determined to absorb every detail.

She was reading Hogwarts: A History now, specifically the section about how many dark wizards had come from Slytherin House. Hermione thought that was odd, considering it wasn’t the house itself that made them evil, but rather the combination of their personal circumstances, choices, and perhaps the house’s emphasis on ambition without corresponding moral guidance that led some down darker paths.

There had been many dark wizards throughout Hogwarts’ history. Salazar Slytherin himself, one of the four founders, had believed that magical education should be restricted to pure-blood families, leading to his eventual departure from the school when the other founders disagreed. His legacy lived on in the Chamber of Secrets and the monster he left behind. Other notable dark wizards had also attended: Herpo the Foul, credited with creating something called a Horcrux; Ekrizdis, who built the prison of Azkaban; and more recently, various dark wizards who have terrorized the wizarding world in recent decades.

Then she continued to where the book spoke of the rise of someone they called The Dark Lord, who had gathered a ring of loyal followers around him in the 1960s and 1970s. The text detailed the horrific acts he had committed: the systematic murder of Muggles and Muggle-born wizards, the use of the Unforgivable Curses, the creation of terror so profound that wizarding families barely dared to leave their homes. Hermione read on about how it had affected Hogwarts at the time—students being pulled from school, families fleeing the country, the very halls of the castle shadowed by fear.

“Hermione!” her mother Helen called from downstairs. “Dinner time, sweetheart!”

“Coming in a moment, Mum!” Hermione called back, but her eyes remained glued to the page.

She read the last few lines, her brow furrowing at the strange feeling that washed over her as she read them. Many were too scared to even speak the Dark Lord’s name. Some said that he had a way of hearing you, of finding you if you dared speak it aloud. 

His name: Lord Voldemort.

Chapter Text

Hogwarts, Scottish Highlands —  February 1942 — Year 4

Tick...Tick...Tick...

The hollow sound pressed against the edges of Tom Riddle’s consciousness. It was somewhere—nowhere—everywhere at once. A mourning bell tolling from dimensions unseen, from hollow spaces between heartbeats and nightmares.

He lay motionless upon his four-poster bed, emerald coverlet pooled around his still form, his pale face turned upward toward the vaulted ceiling where ancient serpents had been carved into the rock. His dark eyes traced their sinuous forms—one reaching toward the light, the other descending into darkness.

To Tom’s eyes, they embodied the eternal struggle between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, light and darkness locked in cosmic battle, yet destined to find balance. Two opposing forces that were, perhaps, merely different faces of the same divine truth.

The serpents seemed to promise that all dualities were illusions.

Even those between worlds.

Tick...Tick...Tick...

The cursed metronome of something neither living nor dead—a temporal wound bleeding seconds into eternity. Each hollow note struck the base of his skull like a funeral dirge, marking time until revelation, until rapture, until ruin.

Yet his mind had already retreated into that familiar labyrinth of obsession, spiraling deeper into thoughts that had consumed his waking hours for months on end. The same intoxicating possibility that visited him in dreams and haunted his every quiet moment.

The Chamber of Secrets.

The very words tasted of forbidden knowledge and ancient power, rolling across his tongue like the sweetest poison. In the silence between each spectral tick, Tom Riddle’s lips curved into something that might have been beautiful, had it not promised the end of all beautiful things.

It was Salazar Slytherin’s masterwork, conceived not from hatred but from wisdom—a mechanism to preserve the purity of magical education. The founder had understood what the other three could not: that diluting wizarding blood with lesser lineages would weaken magic. 

The Chamber was his solution, a fail-safe to ensure that when the time came, Hogwarts could be cleansed of those whose tainted heritage threatened the very foundation of their world.

For months, Tom had pored over every fragment of Hogwarts history, every whispered legend, every carefully guarded secret. The Chamber existed—of that he was certain. And somewhere within its depths lay the key to fulfilling Slytherin’s noble vision.

Tom slipped from his four-poster bed, pulling his robes over his shoulders in one smooth motion. He reached for his leather-bound journal with the automatic gesture of someone retrieving a vital organ—the repository of all his carefully gathered research, his constant companion that accompanied him everywhere. He cradled it protectively against his chest as he made his way out of the common room.

The corridors of Hogwarts at night held a different quality than during the day. Shadows seemed deeper, more alive, and Tom moved through them like he belonged to the darkness. By now, he knew which portraits would whisper secrets to passersby and which ones remained loyal to Slytherin house, turning a blind eye to his nocturnal wanderings.

He slipped into the library, the doors closing silently behind him. Moonlight streamed through the tall windows, painting everything in silver. He made his way to his customary table near the restricted section, concealed in an alcove where few students ever ventured. 

Tom set to work dismantling the protective charms around the Restricted Section, his fingers dancing through the familiar warding patterns. Madam Pince had been surprisingly amenable to granting him extended access—charmed, no doubt, by his apparent thirst for knowledge. Which wasn’t entirely false; Tom simply hungered for very specific kinds of understanding.

His fingers traced along the spines of leather-bound tomes until they found what he sought: Serpentes Antiquus: A Complete Compendium of Ancient Snake Magics. The book fell open willingly in his hands, as if eager to share its secrets with someone who would truly appreciate them.

Tom had reasoned it through with characteristic logic. Salazar Slytherin’s reverence for bloodline purity, his obsession with house pride and magical heritage—whatever guardian he had chosen for his Chamber would reflect those values. It would be a serpent, certainly, but not just any snake. It would be something magnificent, something worthy of the Slytherin legacy.

 Something worthy of the Slytherin name. Something that could strike fear into the hearts of the unworthy.

Page after page revealed the secrets of various serpentine species: the venomous asp that had served Egyptian pharaohs. The rainbow serpent of distant magical tribes. The great pythons that guarded temple treasures. But none felt right, none carried the weight of legend that such a creature would require.

Then he turned a page.

The Basilisk: King of Serpents.

His quill scratched frantically across parchment as he devoured the text. The basilisk—a creature of such deadly power that its very gaze brought death, its venom so potent it could destroy nearly anything it touched. But most intriguing of all: “The great serpents answer only to those who speak their tongue—the ancient language of Parseltongue, known to but few bloodlines of the deepest magical heritage.”

Tom’s quill hung suspended over his journal as the implications crashed over him. He had spoken to snakes. As a child in the orphanage, he had conversed with the serpents in the garden, had commanded them to punish those who had wronged him. He had thought it merely another manifestation of his superior magical ability, but now…

Tom’s pulse quickened. He searched deeper, pulling another ancient volume: The Legacy of Serpents: Bloodlines of Power.

The pages revealed fragments of Salazar’s original theories, hints of “a hidden sanctum where only the worthy may tread.” His eyes scanned hungrily until one passage stopped him cold:

“He who speaks with the deadliest tongue shall inherit ruin.”

A footnote connected the phrase “Heir of Ruin” to an alternate Slytherin prophecy, but Tom crossed it out with violent strokes of his quill.

“Not ruin,” he whispered, underlining the word twice. “Revolution.”

He read on with mounting excitement.

Salazar Slytherin possessed the rare ability to speak Parseltongue—a gift so uncommon that its presence marked the true heir. He designed the Chamber to respond only to this ancient tongue, ensuring that none but his bloodline could ever command what lay within.

Tom’s hand trembled as he wrote, his thoughts racing faster than his quill could capture them. Could he be? The possibility seemed too magnificent, too perfect to be mere coincidence.

Another book yielded the final piece: Noble Bloodlines and Their Descendants. His eyes scanned desperately until he found what he was looking for—the only known surviving heritage of the Slytherin line.

The House of Gaunt.

Tom stared at the page, his mother’s maiden name flooding his vision like injecting itself into his bloodstream like liquid vindication. Merope Gaunt. His mother—a direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself.

The quill fell from his nerveless fingers as the truth crashed over him. He wasn’t just another Slytherin student with grand ambitions.

He was the Heir. The Heir of Ruin.

Tom walked into the Great Hall. The usual chatter hushed slightly as students spotted him making his way to his customary place at the Slytherin table. 

The transformation had been gradual but undeniable. Once, he had commanded respect through academic brilliance and dueling prowess, earning his place through demonstrated superiority. 

But since the whispers had begun—Heir of Slytherin, spoken in hushed, reverent tones—something fundamental had shifted. They no longer merely respected him; they revered him. They looked upon him as something approaching divine, and perhaps, Tom mused with dark satisfaction, they weren’t entirely wrong.

Even the way the girls regarded him had evolved from simple attraction to something bordering on worship. Where once they had found him charming, now they practically genuflected when he passed, desperate for even the smallest acknowledgement. 

It was tedious, really. Their simpering adoration lacked the intellectual stimulation he craved. Power was intoxicating, but the fawning of lesser minds grew tiresome.

Tom took his customary seat at the Slytherin table without so much as a glance at his admirers, settling beside the carefully curated circle he had assembled over the years. 

To his right sat Abraxas Malfoy, the platinum-haired aristocrat Tom had first encountered on the Hogwarts Express four years ago. Even at eleven, Malfoy had possessed that ineffable quality that drew others into his orbit. Old money confidence wrapped in an aura of untouchable privilege. 

Tom had recognized immediately that the boy’s family connections and vast fortune would prove invaluable, and had set about making himself indispensable to the young lordling.

On Tom’s left lounged Lucien Rosier, whose introduction had come through Malfoy during their second week at school. Where Malfoy ruled through wealth and inherited influence, Rosier commanded through social brilliance and an almost supernatural ability to extract secrets from anyone foolish enough to engage him in conversation. 

His smile and fluid mannerisms—distinctly Gallic in their sophistication—served as perfect weapons for social infiltration. He was the youngest scion of one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, but more importantly, he was the beating heart of wizarding society’s gossip network. Information flowed to Rosier like water to the ocean.

Across from them sat Lestrange and Mulciber, both initially skeptical of Tom’s unknown heritage and humble origins. 

That skepticism had evaporated spectacularly during their first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, when Tom had not only dueled Lestrange but rendered him unconscious with a curse that Professor Merrythought had grudgingly admitted was “impressively advanced for a first-year.” 

From that moment, their wariness had transformed into the kind of respect that bordered on fear.

Tom had learned to orchestrate this group like a conductor commanding an orchestra. Each had their role, their purpose, their carefully maintained belief that they were his trusted inner circle rather than merely useful tools. They competed for his attention, his approval, his favor—never quite realizing that their loyalty had been engineered rather than earned.

Tom lifted his cup of black tea and opened his journal with the measured precision that governed all his morning rituals.

He spooned a small portion of plain porridge, each bite as austere as the meals he had known at Wool’s. There was comfort in the familiar deprivation.

Tom listened to their conversation with half an ear, occasionally offering noncommittal murmurs while his mind pursued more significant matters. Their concerns were so... limited. 

They remained trapped in the immediate; he had already begun charting the infinite.

“—can’t understand why they haven’t removed Dumbledore yet,” Rosier complained. “Father mentioned the Wizengamot’s growing concern about his influence on policy. He’s been pushing for Muggle-born representation in Ministry positions. Next he will want them breeding with the Sacred Twenty-Eight.”

That name severed Tom’s wandering attention. Tom’s quill stilled above the parchment as he rolled his neck in one fluid motion. 

“And you can tell he knows exactly what he’s doing,” Rosier said, gesturing wildly with his goblet before draining it. “Always watching with those twinkling eyes. Utterly unnerving.”

“Everything unnerves you, Lucien,” Mulciber said, tearing his roll in half. “Yesterday you practically jumped out of your skin when a third-year bid you good morning.”

“I did not jump,” Rosier protested, gesturing with his hands. “I executed a tactical repositioning.”

Lestrange snorted through a mouthful of sausage. “That what they’re calling cowardice in France these days?”

“Better a breathing strategist than a heroic corpse,” Rosier countered smoothly. “Some of us understand that discretion serves better than valor.”

“Discretion doesn’t win when wands are drawn,” Lestrange said, rolling his shoulder with a visible grimace.

“Neither does recklessness,” Malfoy observed without lifting his eyes from his perfectly buttered toast. “Which explains why Tom has never lost a duel, while you are still recovering from your last… encounter.”

Tom turned a page in his journal, then raised his gaze with deliberate slowness to study the mottled bruising beneath Lestrange’s left eye. 

“Selwyn,” Lestrange muttered. “Bastard’s faster than he looks.”

A flicker of irritation crossed Tom’s features. One of his Knights, bested by an outsider. Disappointing.

“Invite him to next week's meeting.” Tom said, sipping his tea.

The conversation resumed around him. Malfoy began his weekly tirade about Professor Slughorn’s baffling obsession with “collecting strays like some deranged cat lady.” Rosier launched into a gleeful account of last week’s Ministry gala.

Tom allowed their voices to blur into insignificance. His focus moved to the head table, where the Gryffindor Head Boy was wrapping up what looked like a serious conversation with Professor Dumbledore.

“Tom,” Malfoy turned to him. “Settle a debate. Rosier believes Slughorn is considering him for the Slug Club’s Christmas gathering. I maintain the professor is merely being diplomatic.”

Tom’s gaze flicked briefly to Rosier before returning to the head table. “And what makes you believe you merit such consideration, Lucien?”

The question held just enough edge to make Rosier hesitate. “Well, my family’s contributions to the Potions Guild, naturally. And my recent essay on moonstone properties received exceptional—”

Blackwood accepted an envelope from Dumbledore’s outstretched hand, and after exchanging respectful nods, the Gryffindor Head Boy turned toward the Great Hall’s doors.

Tom snapped his journal shut, cutting through Rosier’s explanation.

“Our usual place tonight,” he announced quietly, rising from his seat. “I have something to attend to.”

Around him, three young men nodded their understanding without question.

Tom made his way toward the exit, timing his departure to follow Blackwood at a discreet distance.

The Head Boy moved through the corridors with typical lion-hearted obliviousness, completely unaware of the predator tracking his every step. Mindless Gryffindors, Tom thought with dark amusement. Their misplaced courage made them so wonderfully predictable.

Blackwood turned toward one of the castle’s more secluded staircases. The narrow spiral that led to the Astronomy Tower’s lower levels. Tom quickened his pace, closing the distance between them as he moved into the shadowed stairwell.

“Stupefy.”

The spell hit Blackwood squarely between the shoulder blades. He crumpled forward, his body going limp as he tumbled down several stone steps before coming to rest in an undignified heap. Tom descended the steps, his wand still trained on the paralyzed figure.

Using his shoe, Tom rolled the boy onto his back. Blackwood’s eyes were wide with shock, darting frantically between Tom’s face and the wand pointed at his chest. The perfect Head Boy expression—that nauseating combination of moral superiority and righteous indignation that made Tom’s skin crawl—was replaced by genuine fear.

“Surprised, Blackwood?” Tom asked conversationally, crouching beside the stunned boy. “I’m afraid your services to the professor have become rather… inconvenient.”

Tom invaded the boy’s unprotected mind. Blackwood’s thoughts lay exposed like an open book, pages fluttering in the mental breeze. Tom sifted through the mental debris until he found what he sought: the conversation with Dumbledore, replaying in vivid detail.

Tom withdrew from the boy’s mind and noticed the letter clutched in Blackwood’s paralyzed fingers. He plucked it free, breaking the official Hogwarts seal with casual disregard.

Tom allowed himself a small smile as he dropped the letter back onto Blackwood’s chest. The boy’s eyes blazed with impotent fury.

“What a nasty little fall you had down the stairs,” Tom said with a cold smirk, rolling his wand between his fingers.

He lifted his wand toward Blackwood’s temple. 

“Obliviate.”

The anger faded from the boy’s eyes, replaced by confusion. Tom stood, straightened his robes, and walked away, leaving Blackwood to wake up believing he had simply taken a tumble down the stone steps.

Tom made his way to Dumbledore’s empty Transfiguration classroom where his inner circle was waiting for him.

They had started these meetings in second year. What had begun as a group with shared interests had been carefully manipulated by Tom into something far more useful: a collection of devoted followers who believed themselves to be Tom’s trusted equals while serving as nothing more than instruments of his will.

He had made it seem so natural in those early days. He had shared that he had the same interests as them, listened like he genuinely cared about their opinions, asked thoughtful questions that made them feel intelligent and important. 

And once they trust you, they’ll hand you the world thinking it was their gift to give.

Tom opened the classroom door to find his Knights arranged in the front rows of desks, their positioning as carefully orchestrated as everything else in their relationship. Abraxas sat in the front row center, naturally assuming the position closest to wherever Tom would stand. Lucien had claimed the desk to his right, while the others spread out in a loose semicircle that suggested casual gathering rather than formal hierarchy.

Lestrange had his shoes kicked up on his desk and was amusing himself by transfiguring Dumbledore’s carefully organized quills into what appeared to be tiny serpents that writhed across the professor’s desktop.

Tom flicked his yew wand, returning the quills to their proper state and pushed Lestrange’s feet off the desk with a sharp gesture.

“We keep the room exactly as we found it,” Tom continued, moving toward the front of the classroom. “Professor Dumbledore has a remarkable memory for detail, and I would prefer not to give him additional reasons to scrutinize our activities.”

Lestrange looked momentarily rebellious, but a single glance at Tom’s expression was enough to quell any protest. The others straightened in their seats with the automatic response of students who had learned that Tom’s displeasure was something to be avoided.

Tom positioned himself behind Dumbledore’s desk, the symbolism not lost on any of them. Here he stood where the Deputy Headmaster normally commanded attention, where one of the wizarding world’s most respected figures held court over young minds. 

The irony was delicious.

“Gentlemen,” Tom began, his voice carrying easily through the moonlit classroom, “we stand at a crossroads between mediocrity and greatness. While our peers waste their talents on Quidditch matches and House rivalries, we forge something far more significant. Tonight, we take another step toward reclaiming what rightfully belongs to those with the vision to seize it.”

The four young men seated before him with unwavering focus, waiting for his direction.

“Our recent efforts have been... adequate, but we must expand our influence if we are to achieve lasting change. Each of you has proven your worth, and now I require your continued dedication to our cause.”

Tom’s gaze swept over them before settling on his first target.

“Abraxas,” Tom began without preamble, “I need you to acquire Professor Slughorn’s chrysanthemum charm—the one he keeps locked in his office desk. It’s warded, but nothing your family’s resources can’t overcome.”

Malfoy nodded. “Certainly. Father’s associates at Borgin and Burkes specialize in procuring items of a... sensitive nature. How soon do you require it?”

“Within the fortnight.” Tom turned. “Lestrange, Mulciber—you will be monitoring Professor Dumbledore’s movements. Every meeting, every owl, every late-night visitor. I particularly want to know about any correspondence with… continental wizards.”

Lestrange frowned. “Continental? What’s so special about—”

“Questions are for those who lack trust in my judgment,” Tom cut him off sharply. “You will understand when understanding becomes necessary.”

Lestrange nodded quickly. 

Rosier cleared his throat. “While we’re discussing assignments, Avery cornered me after Potions. He’s been observing our work and wants to contribute. Says he agrees with our methods.”

Tom considered this for a moment. “Bring him to the next meeting. He may prove useful.”

“Now,” Tom continued, his voice taking on an almost reverent quality, “we approach the culmination of months of research. I have discovered something—a solution that has eluded this school for centuries.”

Each of them listened with rapt attention, captivated by the fervor in Tom’s voice.

“For too long, Hogwarts has been diluted by those who possess magic but lack the heritage to wield it properly. Blood traitors and mudblood sympathizers have corrupted the very foundations of magical education. But I have found a way to restore the natural order.”

Tom’s eyes blazed with quiet intensity as he spoke, and his followers absorbed every word like gospel.

“When the time comes, when our preparations are complete, this school will be cleansed of its impurities. Those unworthy of their magical gifts will understand their place, or they will find themselves... elsewhere. The weak-willed will beg forgiveness for enabling this corruption. And we—we who understand true magical heritage—will inherit the world they are too spineless to rule properly.”

“Bloody hell,” Mulciber breathed. “When you put it like that, it sounds almost—”

“Revolutionary?” Lestrange finished with a sharp grin. “Our Tom’s always had grand visions. Remember third year when he spent six months perfecting that tracking curse? Obsessive doesn’t begin to cover—”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees as Tom’s gaze fixed on Lestrange. “This is no club,” he said quietly, each word cutting. “This is not some adolescent game or academic pursuit. What we do here will echo through history. What we build will outlive every Ministry that has ever governed wizardkind. If that concept exceeds your intellectual capacity, Caractacus, you’re welcome to find more suitable companions among the Hufflepuffs.”

Lestrange paled and looked away, properly chastened.

Tom’s expression softened marginally as he continued. “Our remaining objectives require careful coordination. The cursed items must be distributed strategically—we want influence, not pandemonium. The surveillance of faculty members needs to appear routine. And our recruitment efforts must remain absolutely discreet.”

The next hour passed in focused concentration as Tom guided them through advanced spellwork—defensive charms typically reserved for N.E.W.T. level students, curse variations that wouldn’t appear in any Hogwarts textbook, and subtle hexes that could incapacitate without leaving obvious traces. 

Wand movements became sharper, incantations more precise, and the air itself seemed to thicken with accumulated magic as his followers absorbed knowledge that would serve them well beyond these walls.

Tom’s quill moved across the journal pages in steady strokes, documenting the evening’s revelations and assignments with meticulous care. The scratching of ink on parchment was the only sound in the empty Transfiguration classroom as he waited for Mulciber—always the last to leave, always lingering as if hoping for some additional scrap of Tom’s attention.

Finally, the door clicked shut, and Tom was alone with his thoughts and plans. He closed the journal decisively and rose from behind Dumbledore’s desk, straightening his robes with the same precision he applied to everything else in his carefully ordered existence.

The second floor awaited him, shrouded in the kind of expectant darkness that seemed to whisper of secrets and possibilities. Tom made his way through the corridors with purpose, his destination clear even if the exact method remained frustratingly elusive. The girls’ bathroom stood like a monument to his success, yet also to his incomplete understanding.

The entrance was here. It had to be. Every instinct, every careful deduction led to this location. Tom had spent weeks testing his theory, standing in these very corridors and speaking into the darkness in the ancient tongue that marked his heritage. The responses he received had both thrilled and puzzled him—a voice that carried the weight of millennia, speaking with reverence that bordered on worship.

Tom positioned himself near the bathroom’s entrance and closed his eyes, centering himself as he prepared to commune with the guardian that had waited so long for his call. The words emerged in the sibilant hiss of Parseltongue, carrying across the empty space:

“Ancient one, guardian of the founder’s will, your heir stands ready. Speak to me.”

The silence stretched for several heartbeats, and then came the response, filled with terrible majesty:

“Sssoon, young masster. The ssssealed doorway growsss weak with your presssence. The blood callsss to blood.”

Tom’s pulse quickened as he pulled his text from his bag, flipping to the page he knew had the information on the basilisk. His quill moved quickly, writing PIPES in bold letters before underlining it twice. Of course—the basilisk wasn’t simply somewhere nearby, it was moving through the castle’s very infrastructure, using the ancient plumbing system that honeycombed the walls like arteries.

His hands began to trace along the stone wall, fingers searching for any imperfection, any hidden mechanism that might yield to his touch. The bathroom’s entrance beckoned, but Tom’s instincts told him the true secret lay deeper, older, more cunningly concealed.

Then his fingers found it—a sink that seemed older than the rest, its brass taps green with age and neglect. Etched into the side of the tap with such subtle artistry that only someone looking with purpose would notice it. A tiny snake, no bigger than his thumbnail, carved with exquisite detail.

Underneath were the words:

My kingdom lies beyond.