Birds of a Feather

He was no more a ward, no longer under the care of a guardian. There was no one whose direction he was obliged to conform, no one to whom he was beholden. The one entity with legal authority over Tom's life was Tom himself.

This was true independence.

With a sigh of deep contentment, Tom cocooned himself under the blankets; he threw an arm around Hermione and towed her nearer, tucking the top of her head beneath his chin.

"Tom," said Hermione in muffled voice, rousing from her sleep, "what time is it?"

"No school today, Hermione. Go back to sleep."

"Tom." Hermione pushed at his chest. "You have to go back to your own room!"

"No I don't."

"What if your grandmother comes in and finds us like this?"

"Then," Tom murmured drowsily, "she'll invite the parson in for tea, so he can recite his verses at us. Which will it be? Hmm. Reverend Rivers had a few favourites. 'One who lustfully looks at a woman is an adulterer in his heart'. Do you want to be an adulterer, Hermione?"

"No," said Hermione, rolling over to face him, "'His heart'? Why would that make me the adulterer? One of us would have to be married for it to be adultery!"

"It would be in poor taste to call you a fornicator," Tom replied. "Considering the utter lack of any fornicating—not to mention the logistical difficulties of fornicating alone. You understand that there's no possibility of my being the culpable one in this situation; the parson knows too well who pays his living stipend." He yawned and stretched, muscles creaking from disuse. "Sorry, Hermione, but you're an adulteress."

"But I haven't looked 'lustfully' at anyone!"

"You haven't?"

"Never."

"Lustful thoughts, then? Dreams count, too."

"None."

"Are you quite sure?"

"Yes!"

"You know," whispered Tom, "if you did happen to have any, I'd never tell anyone. You can trust me, Hermione."

"You want to hear about my, um, bawdy dreams?" Hermione asked incredulously.

"With as much detail as you can provide."

"Alright," said Hermione. "I had one, not too long ago."

"Go on," Tom urged her, propping himself up on his elbow.

"Well, there was a boy, and he was sleeping in my bed."

"Was he?"

"He was," confirmed Hermione, sounding very serious. "He was also a restless sleeper. All through the night, he couldn't keep his hands on his own side. And he had a great, big, swollen—"

Tom was near breathless with anticipation.

"—Sense of self-importance," Hermione finished. She gave Tom a reproachful look. "Honestly, Tom, what did you expect me to say?"

To his disappointment, Hermione threw off the blanket that Tom had so painstakingly wrapped around her during the night, wriggled into her carpet slippers, and flounced off to begin her morning routine. Tom was left alone in the bed, frustrated beyond words, but not discouraged in the least. Reverend Rivers, the shepherd of the Wool's Orphanage flock, would have disapproved. But Tom was sure that the Hangleton village parson—after a subtle reminder that the man's benefice was drawn from the fruits of the Riddle estate—would have offered an enthusiastic vindication on Tom's behalf.

That was a privilege of the Riddles' status as the leading family within their social set, and it lent Tom's opinion a greater authority than that of the average man. He was listened to; his words had weight.

Except when his audience was one Hermione Granger.

It was vexing how his signals had been mis-interpreted, his overtures re-buffed. For the first time in a long time, Tom was found wanting—very wanting indeed—and he was forced to admit that it was a thoroughly unpleasant sensation.

He groaned, slumping into the pillows, frustrated about the state of his own frustrations. He could confess that his feelings were pathetic, and how unsettling it was to witness this erosion of discipline, his steady capitulation to the Fires of Temptation. His mind was as keen as ever, his will resolute, but his body was weak to the works of the flesh.

Although he could have resented Hermione for the troubles she wrought upon him, he didn't. That was the easy way out—the coward's resort, like a tavern sot blaming the barman for his own drunkenness. No, Hermione wasn't to blame. The fault was Tom's, or to be more precise, the various glands in Tom's body that sent him lustful dreams at night, and woke him in the morning with painfully thwarted expectations.

Those various glands were still up to their pernicious business when Hermione returned to her room, dressed in a fresh set of day clothes—a blouse worn under a thick woollen jumper, a modest skirt, and a pair of neat patent lace-up shoes. Hermione hummed to herself, running a brush through her fluffy hair and wincing as the bristles caught on a tangle and could not be pulled free.

"Why aren't you out of bed?" Hermione asked, settling into the chair at her writing desk and unfolding the mirror. She began inspecting the knot, prodding at it with the tip of her wand. "It's a quarter to nine. They'll have breakfast started by now."

Tom coughed, rolling onto his stomach and pulling the blankets tighter around himself. "It's too cold."

"Cast a charm. Are you a wizard or not?"

"My wand's on the nightstand, on the other side of the bed," Tom returned. "It's too far to reach."

"How curious," said Hermione, picking the knot apart. "When I first met you, I'd never have taken you for a layabout."

"When you first met me," said Tom, intently observing Hermione pull her hair over her shoulder and expose the pale stretch of skin at the back of her neck, "I wasn't a member of the leisure class. Now that I am, I'm obliged to fulfill the requirements of the position."

"I don't see why you have to do it on my bed," Hermione protested. She glanced into the mirror, showing a reflection of Tom sprawled under her blankets.

"Our bed," said Tom. "Since I'm noble enough to share houseroom with you, it makes this bed ours. It'd be a different situation, of course, if you were paying me rent."

Hermione scoffed. "Playing the landlord now, Tom? And you call Nott a parasite."

"He is one, but I'm not. I haven't charged you a knut, have I?"

"As if the noble Tom Riddle would take payment in knuts. 'The pound of flesh, which I demand of him, is dearly bought'," recited Hermione, brushing her hair. "'Tis mine and I will have it!'"

"That sounds like Shakespeare."

"If you'd read the books I gave to Wool's, you'd know," said Hermione. "I donated the entire First Folio during the Christmas visit of Thirty-Seven!"

"I've only read The Winter's Tale, and that wasn't because I found it entertaining," Tom said. "The rest could go hang for all I cared. It's the same story in every play: the worthy are rewarded, the guilty are punished, and the comic companion tells a filthy joke about breaking wind or dropping one down the bog. I've never understood why you like theatre so much. The serious ones are all melodrama, and the comedic ones are all vulgarity, wrapped up in pentameter, spectacle, and the illusion of 'culture'. A sensible person ought to—"

Hermione had set aside her hairbrush, and was now unbuttoning the collar of her blouse, leaning over her desk to get a better look in the mirror. With a huff, she reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a jar of cream, then proceeded to dab at her neck and throat with it, her shoulders bare but for the thin straps of the slip she wore under her shirt.

It was difficult for Tom to tear his eyes away from the sight. He coughed. "Hermione?"

"Yes, Tom?"

"What on Earth are you doing?"

"Remedying all the marks you left last night," said Hermione, smearing cream on the underside of her jaw. "When your whiskers grow in, they're prickly. You left my skin with raw patches."

Instantly, Tom's hand went to his chin. He had shaved early yesterday morning, but stubble would have darkened his skin by the late evening. His moustache grew at a slower rate than his beard, so he preferred to go clean-shaven than let it grow out, unlike a few of the upper-year boys at Hogwarts who'd embraced the traditional wizarding ideal without a hint of contrition. They looked like filthy vagrants; it was ridiculous that his fellow Slytherins would mock students who pinned their cloaks wrong in the winter, and not the students whose facial hair gave them the appearance of a stray dog who'd caught the mange.

"I apologise." (Tom didn't mean this.) "Next time, I won't be so rough." (This one he did mean.)

"Sorry?" Hermione said. "Next time?"

"Tomorrow," said Tom. He glanced at the clock over the mantel. "Or tonight, rather. You'll be staying here until term starts next week—I had Grandmama arrange it with your mother."

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Hermione demanded.

"I told you to bring a spare change of clothing, didn't I? Everything else you need is here already," said Tom. "They won't let us share rooms when we have to go back to Hogwarts, so it's best that we make the most of it while we can. And there's no one else who could stand as a credible witness to any accusations of impropriety directed toward you, Hermione. Who else could it be—Lieutenant Tindall?" Tom couldn't bring himself to use the man's given name. It was too familiar, and they weren't friends, no matter what Tindall thought—or rather, presumed where they stood. "He didn't donate two hundred pounds to the poor children of North Yorkshire."

Hermione shook her head and buttoned her blouse back up, clearing away the odds and ends that cluttered the desk, and then her clothes strewn about the room, including the evening dress that had been thrown over the back of her chair.

She was distracted, and in that time, Tom's glands had settled into quiescence; with a quick glance around, he was able to vacate himself to his own bedroom, dignity preserved. He was glad to be at home and not at Hogwarts. He was without doubt that if he'd stepped into the shower in the Slytherin dormitory bathroom, he'd be greeted by a susurration of noise echoing around the drains, a display of the Basilisk's amusement.

The creature, for some reason, found entertainment in Tom's failed "attempts" at securing a mate—not that Tom was even attempting. The "securing" part, certainly, but it was not for any common purpose like mating. Tom had tried to explain it to the Basilisk, but his translation abilities must have been deficient; the Basilisk refused to take Tom at his word and kept offering him advice on how to attract a female. Hide food in her nest, the fresher the better; urinate on her doorstep, making sure to go without water for half a day so he produced an extra-potent scent; wait for her to eat a big meal and become sleepy and lethargic in digestion, then wrap himself around her until she gave up on chasing him off.

Poor advice, as to be expected, Tom had thought. That last tidbit of information was not as promising as it had first sounded.

Going down after washing and shaving, Tom saw that Hermione had beaten him to breakfast. The table was occupied by a handful of guests that had stayed at the Riddle House overnight. The North Riding locals had left for their homes after the winner of bridge tournament was decided, but the guests who had arrived by rail had been invited to stay until the train service resumed in the morning. That number included the Grangers and the Tindalls, who looked bright and chipper as they served themselves from a communal platter of eggs, beans, and a hash of potatoes fried in the drippings of yesterday's beef dinner.

The most chipper of all was Roger Tindall, who appeared better rested than everyone else. However, his appearance was brought down by the rumpled state of his uniform, which looked as if he'd slept the whole night in it. His collar was crushed and lay askew, the sign of someone who had done a poor job of hanging his clothes before bed, and although he'd tried to hide it under his necktie and tunic lapels, Tom noticed it and could not tear his eyes away.

"—And you had the presence of mind to light the fire and cover me a with a blanket," said Roger, speaking to Hermione. "I must express my greatest regrets, Hermione. I don't know what came over me—must've been the train journey, or one glass too many of the wine. I dread to think that I was such dull company; you must think me a complete and utter scrub."

"I couldn't think such a thing, Roger," said Hermione, picking at the contents of her plate. She glanced away from Roger as the butter dish came around, and began buttering her toast so rigorously that her knife poked a hole straight through the bread. "It's not your fault. You have a demanding post, defending Britain. Knowing that, I couldn't bear to wake you. If anyone should apologise, it's me."

"If you'll allow me, I should like to repair the situation—"

"What situation?" asked Tom, sliding in next to Roger. The maid at the sideboard hurried over to pour his tea and serve him two slices of toast kept warm in a chafing dish. "What's all this about?"

Hermione reddened. "Nothing, Tom."

"Nothing's ever nothing," said Tom. "Did something happen last night?"

"Nothing happened, I'm afraid," said Roger with a sheepish smile. "A tremendous disappointment. On both sides, I dare to hope."

"It's alright, Roger. Let's both of us banish it from our thoughts; it won't do any good to keep on about it."

"Well," said Tom, "I'm not going to banish it from my thoughts. Let me hear it, and I'll be the judge of how much 'nothing' happened last night." He shot a stern look at Tindall. "Hermione is my guest. Not only that, but she's a respectable girl, and this is a respectable house. I won't have any sort of low business conducted under my roof, thank you."

"Who made you the judge?" said Hermione.

"And who said this was your roof?" asked Roger.

"Me, on both counts," said Tom impatiently. "Now, if you please—"

"I thought this was your grandfather's house," said Roger, gaze flicking to the end of the table, where Mr. Riddle was working his way through a beef butty with brown sauce, a copy of the Yorkshire Post open at his elbow, unaware he was being observed, and also unaware of the dollop of sauce that had dripped onto the paper.

Tom scowled. "In a legal sense, yes. And it'll be mine in a legal sense, too. There's just a bit of a delay for now."

"A 'delay'," Roger echoed. "What a funny way to refer to your father. How is he, by the way? We'd expected to meet him, but I've not heard a word spoken about him for all the time I've been here."

"He went on holiday," said Tom, his tone dismissive. "He's not important."

"But he's your father," said Roger. "How is he not important?"

Hermione's eyes were alight with curiosity. "Weren't you worried about his health? Isn't that important?"

"It isn't. Not anymore," Tom muttered. "He's packed off to Harrogate. The doctors have come up with a cure called 'hydrotherapy'; they've mentioned something about regulating his inner balance, whatever that means. Mrs. Willrow sends him a basket every week of all his childhood favourite cakes and biscuits, and Grandmama had Bryce put the horse on a stockcar so he can ride his own beast around instead of hiring one there. He's doing quite well for himself, I'd say. Your concern is unwarranted."

Harrogate was a spa town, a minor Yorkshire city with a reputation for health and leisure, famed for its mineral wells. It was a local holiday destination for the workers of Sheffield and York, industrial towns that had become grim factories for war materiel these past few years. Though Tom's grandparents still went up to York to have their clothing made—they'd hoarded bolts of worsted and gabardine before the implementation of the fabric ration in Forty-One—and to buy the more exotic drygoods not stocked by the Hangleton grocer, much of their socialisation was done in the tea houses and dining establishments of Harrogate.

He had heard the town mentioned over dinner during the summer, but he'd hardly paid attention to it, concluding that the affairs of his grandparents' social calendar had no relevance to him. It was only when he'd eavesdropped on the maids whispering to each other that Tom became aware of what had happened to his father after The Incident. He'd been sent away—Tom knew that—but not just for an extended holiday. For treatment.

For Tom recognised what the term 'treatment' meant.

He'd heard it discussed in the matron's office of Wool's Orphanage more than a few times, used in conjunction with a handful of ominous associated phrases: 'He'll Be Looked At', 'The Doctor Said', and 'It's For the Best'.

As it was his father who had been sent away, not him, Tom didn't feel much sympathy for the man. His experience had showed him that it wasn't difficult to avoid treatment; if a person simply pretended that he didn't need treatment, its necessity would never enter discussion. If, however, a person was incapable of performing such a simple task and making it look convincing—then he deserved what he got.

To his dismay, Hermione and Roger Tindall didn't understand this, and pecked at him throughout the rest of breakfast.

"What manner of illness ails him? Morale always helps with these things; you could try an excursion to the Monkton Priory, not far from Harrogate. They have group singalongs every Wednesday night for recuperating soldiers on convalescent leave, or so I'm told by one of the lady guests from your party."

"Tom, do you want to visit him before term starts?"

"What a bad business—have your family consulted with a solicitor?"

"I'll come with you if you want to go!"

"You can't leave them isolated, or they'll start malingering. It's all in the mind, you see."

Tom was grateful when the maid whispered to Mrs. Riddle that the motorcar had been brought around the front, ready to deliver the guests to the train station. This was a tactful reminder that they had better get on with their meals, instead of needling Tom with their questions.

The sheer audacity of it, probing into one's personal affairs at the dining table, without a shred of common decency. It was the pinnacle of poor manners, an effect amplified by their lack of awareness to their own offences. A man, interrogated in his own house? It wasn't to be borne!

Outrageous.

Hermione wasn't to blame, of course. It was Roger Tindall who was the instigator of all Tom's troubles. Tom rightfully blamed him for whatever mysterious situation had occurred between Tindall and Hermione the previous evening; Hermione was awkward around the other fellow throughout breakfast, as if she were pained by the thought of being too long alone with him.

In the name of propriety, Tom observed the departure proceedings at a distance. Coats, scarves, and umbrellas were brought and distributed to their proper owners. Newspapers were handed out, along with packed lunches of cold beef sandwiches and small sweets from the party, wrapped in sturdy brown paper and tied up with twine. Then came the exchange of visiting cards, a last farewell, a flurry of kisses on cheeks.

Tucked behind an ornamental flower arrangement, Tom listened to Roger bid his goodbyes.

"—If you write to me with the directions of the department's officer quarters, the letters will be delivered as priority mail. But the censors open and read everything we get, so you can't write anything too sensitive," said Roger.

"Do they censor your outgoing mail, too?"

"Oh, without question. I'd say that they're tremendously overzealous with it." Roger laughed, and then continued on, "You'll be done in June, won't you? You should come back to London when you've finished school. You've a good mind and I shouldn't like to see it wasted; I'd certainly vouch for you, and so would my grandfather. We could see about having you start with a secretarial traineeship in the department—it's not much, a Government job's far from lavish if you're in desperate need of ready money, but it's still a Vital Occupation. Good benefits, no need to worry about counting ration tickets, and you'll be set for yourself when the war's over."

"I don't know, Roger," said Hermione, her voice taking on a quaver of uncertainty. "I haven't yet made up my mind."

"Trust that I wouldn't have you wasting your time serving tea and taking dictations," Roger said, patting Hermione on the shoulder. "I'll see you in the summer, alright? Take care and steady on, Hermione."

Roger gave Hermione a decorous kiss on the air beside her cheek, whispering a few final words, too softly for Tom to overhear them. Hermione endured it with a stiff posture, as Roger leaned in and drew himself away, turning to the maid to take his coat.

The Tindalls left, Hermione and Mrs. Riddle waving them from the doorstep, handkerchiefs in hand. The motor chugged away down the hill, the engine sounds soon muffled by a bank of morning fog, a damp mist that merged with the perpetual winter drizzle.

Tom stepped out from behind the flower arrangement. "I still don't know what you see in him."

Hermione frowned, but didn't seem too offended by Tom's statement. "He's a good man, Tom."

"Despite the uniform and shiny pips, he's a desk warmer. He's not a real war hero."

"Are you saying that only war heroes are worthy of admiration?" said Hermione waspishly. "That limits my social circle to... Major Tindall and my Dad."

"For now," said Tom, taking her hand and leading her upstairs to their rooms. "Anyway, what has he got to offer? A 'Vital Occupation'? Extra rations? Tsk. You know and I both know that you can do better than settling."

The Grangers stayed until lunch, a light meal consisting of yesterday's meat with a side of coddled eggs and potatoes gratiné; the ensemble was paired with an equally light white wine, and finally, a dessert selection of peeled hothouse fruits glazed with liqueur syrup and dusted with confectionery sugar. Mrs. Riddle took great care in expounding upon the finer details of the lunch menu, sprinkled with a liberal helping of French terms.

"The meat sauce is a classic demi-glace, Thomas' favourite. We make it the proper way here, with the roast ends, not that awful modern ready-made nonsense from a factory. Packet gravy. Bovril." Mrs. Riddle gave a haughty sniff at the mention of the name. "Nothing wrong with a spot of beef tea to have on the train on a cold day, but I refuse to have it served at my table, and to guests? Never. The war may force us to lower our expectations, it shan't see me lowering my standards."

This talk segued into other minimum standards that Mrs. Riddle kept for her household, and in particular, the living accommodations maintained for family members and offered to personal guests. She made a point of showing off how well-kept Tom and Hermione looked; Tom's grandmother had found out about Tom sleeping in the Grangers' cellar during their past summers—nevermind that most families in London slept underground during the air raids—and somehow took it as a black mark against Mrs. Granger's aptitude and adequacy as a host.

"Look at their healthy colour," said Mrs. Riddle, nodding at Tom, who had, in favour of listening to Hermione, learned how to relegate her background noise. "Their hearty appetites! It's the fresh air and space out there. You don't have that in the city. Everyone living up in London must be packed elbow to elbow; we've heard all the dreadful stories on the wireless. Armament workers forced to share tiny rooms near the factory, no privacy but a bedsheet strung on a hook between beds. How terrible their conditions sound."

"With this time spent preparing for the party," Hermione said to him in a low voice; she was always respectful during meals, but she, like Tom, began to glaze over with disinterest when Mrs. Riddle's sensibilities were affronted by something too different or too new to meet her standards. "I haven't got around to finishing the set of past papers the teachers assigned for the holidays. They told me if I completed the extra questions, they'd mark them to the examiner's criteria points."

"It saves on work commutes and keeps non-essential vehicles off the roads," Dr. Granger remarked. "Many a life has been saved because an ambulance didn't have to wait for a commercial lorry to unload its cargo."

"Can we compare answers?" asked Hermione, impervious to the conversation carried on by the other half of the table. "You must have made some progress on them. I didn't get the one on states of altered matter and their relationship to the state of non-being. Which books did you use as reference?"

"Convenient or not, it doesn't make sense that young girls would so willingly volunteer for such a dirty business," said Mrs. Riddle. She shook her head, adding, "It would be different if they were all reformatory girls—those of that kind should feel lucky to be given employment with no prior references. But the man on the wireless interviewed one working girl, and she was from a good family! Gentle girls ought to be treated gently."

"The factories pay a fair wage," Mrs. Granger pointed out. "And the ability to earn a wage and serve her country is a firm assurance to a young lady: that she can make a worthwhile living beyond relying on the indulgence of a good family. The gift of independence is one that most of those girls have never been afforded."

"In my expert opinion, I cannot see any reward more worthwhile for a properly raised girl," Mrs. Riddle returned, "than a good family."

She glanced over to Tom, who was whispering quietly in Hermione's ear, not wanting to be overheard discussing magical subjects: "Extension questions, if they're on the exam, won't lose you points if you skip them—you can still score a perfect one-hundred percent without them. And no, you won't find the answer in Advanced Transfiguration; yes, I know it's the official school textbook—the purpose of the extensions is to encourage an understanding deeper than the fundamentals of workaday spellcasting. I can recommend you the following books..."

Hermione leaned in closer, her eyes bright with eagerness. Tom noticed the lull in background conversation, followed by his grandmother's—and soon, Mrs. Granger's—attention on him and Hermione; he bestowed the two observers with a brief, knowing smile.

He tilted his head down, raising a hand to tuck a curl of Hermione's hair behind her ear, and murmured, "Try Wildsmith's The Transference of Substance, or Rastrick's Apocrypha of Materiality. The last one's pure academic theorisation, but the logic is sound. The disadvantage is that you'll have to get Dumbledore to write you a note for it. And it was never completed—Rastrick never found a way to apply his theory to functional spellwork. They had to compile the book from his notes, and his last words seemed to indicate that he died in an accident, from Vanishing himself."

Hermione's breath caught. "That sounds like a dangerous book, Tom."

"It's just a book," said Tom. "And some books are worth the danger, wouldn't you agree?"

Hermione gave a soft laugh. Their legs bumped under the table; Tom brushed his knuckles against Hermione's stockinged knee, pleased that she didn't immediately bat his hand away.

Mrs. Granger was the first to break eye contact, and her conversation with Mrs. Riddle resumed, albeit on a different topic of conversation. Dessert was consumed, the meal wound down, and the Grangers' imminent departure loomed with the approaching hour. The cue for the end of the meal came when the maid appeared with a pair of coats brought out of the cloakroom.

"Hermione," said Mrs. Granger, in an almost resigned voice, "are you sure you want to stay here? The Riddles have been kind enough to book us a compartment on the London train. It would be no trouble to have you join us—you could spend the rest of your holiday at home. Roger would be close enough to visit on the weekend; the Tindalls live in Weybridge, and that's no distance at all from London."

Hermione's expression shifted from bright-eyed academic rapture to confusion and then to hesitation.

"I finished my Transfiguration paper. Defence and Charms, too," Tom whispered, deciding that the silence had gone on for far too long. "References sorted by alphabetical order, just the way the professors like it. It's in my room."

"I'm sorry, Mum, but our exams are only months away..."

Tom smiled, taking Hermione's hand, the action obscured by the drape of the tablecloth.

Some might have considered it an act of unscrupulous intent for Tom to persuade Hermione in this particular manner. It crossed Tom's mind, but he disregarded it in an instant. It could not be a malicious act if there was no harm done, nor any intent to cause harm.

He wanted to help Hermione.

Yes, it was natural—as with all actions he undertook—that there was an element of serving his own interests: he preferred having Hermione near at hand, and there was nothing he liked as much as slipping into bed on a cold winter evening, and finding the blankets warmed by the pleasant heat of soft flesh and a sweet-smelling body. A charm wasn't the same, just as an animated wizarding portrait could never hope to reproduce the true substance of the original wizard, even if their surface appearance and mannerisms were one and the same.

Over the next few days, Tom discerned the full spectrum of Hermione's changing moods. They oscillated from anxious to guilt-ridden, to an odd and inexplicable melange of self-pity and melancholy. He tried not to look—Tom respected Hermione's sense of privacy, though he himself didn't understand her peculiar obsession with it. It was as much an inconvenience as Hermione's demand for privacy when she changed clothes for bed.

(He'd tried bringing his dressing gown and bed clothes into her room, with the expectation that they should learn to consolidate things and share a single room, but Hermione had squeaked and pushed him out just as he'd gotten the first handful of buttons undone. It was shockingly rude; he would never contemplate treating Hermione with such discourtesy, and no, the marks he'd left on her throat and collar in his enthusiasm did not count.)

Normally, Tom cared little if people liked or approved of him. Their opinions were irrelevant, their perspectives close-minded, their principles self-limiting, and thus they had no influence on what Tom wanted or how he acted. But Hermione's reticence confused him; he felt that Hermione should enjoy his company, as he'd taken deliberate care to learn what touches soothed her and which ones made her erupt into spontaneous giggles. It was all part of his 'conditioning' treatment, which had been a great success in training the Acromantula.

The maids, when pressed for advice, were unhelpful.

"She'll come 'round in a week or so," the first housemaid had told him. "Not to worry, sir. Nowt but the common sufferin' of women, I reckon. 'Tis a good sign. Your grandmama will be pleased to see the two of you takin' the proper precautions—" she gave him a huge wink, then went on, "—She were lookin' forward to havin' more family in the house, sure enough. But if I'm to put it plainly, sir, she'll expect fair warnin' when you get 'round to it."

"Precautions," Tom repeated, his expression blank. "Oh. Yes. Those 'precautions'."

"The chemist down in Easingwold has a good reputation for—"

"Thank you, Frances," said Tom quickly. "You're dismissed."

That was hardly constructive, so Tom waited for an opportunity to ask Hermione, late one night when they'd settled down for bed, having finished their post-dinner revision session.

"I'm not ill," Hermione said, peeling a pair of red rubber hot water bottles out of the bed—the maid had left them the last few days, believing Hermione suffered from feminine ailments. "I'm just... worried."

"What about?" asked Tom. He stretched and yawned, looking very natural about it and not at all as if he was angling for information. "The exams? You got full marks on the practice paper. Not that it's hard to do once you learn how to decipher the exam structure. 'Assess', 'Define', 'Examine', and 'Compare': when you know how they phrase the questions, the answers are simple."

"Well, yes," said Hermione. She shrugged. "The exams. And what comes after the exams. The... you know, the future."

"What about the future?" Tom had never been one to waste his time stewing in indecision. The future became the present; it was inevitable, and to remain undecided was to be left behind. Decisions had always been clear to him. He measured with a scale, weighted by benefit, detriment, an acceptable level of contingency, and no room for hemming and hawing.

"My future. What I'm going to do when, for the first time, I'm given my own life to forge to my own desires. How do I choose? How am I to pick something? I've always known what I wanted done, but that raises the question of what's available to do, and what's even feasible?" Hermione sat down heavily in the bed, shoulders slumped. "I'm afraid that I'll choose the wrong one, or choose the right one and find I'm woefully under-prepared. I've been studying for years and years, these past seven years at school, there hasn't been anything that's ever made me feel... unqualified. If I didn't understand anything, all I had to do was visit the library."

"You've nothing to fear," said Tom, rolling over to her side of the bed and throwing a comforting arm around her shoulders. "I'll be here, too. I've spent as many years at school as you have. We'll explore the future together, wherever that takes us."

He manoeuvred her into the bed, tucking her under the blankets, then settled in himself.

With a flick of his fingers, Tom extinguished the light.

"You can take as much time as you want," he whispered. "You can live here, with me, until you decide where you want to go. I'll take care of you."

On any other day, Hermione would have huffed and grumbled about being 'taken care of', as if she were a pet or an invalid. But on this night, she didn't offer a word in complaint. She just let out a tired sigh and turned to her side, presenting Tom with the back of her head.

Tom wasn't discouraged. He folded his arms around Hermione's waist and held her until her breathing evened out and he sensed the dispersal of her black mood. The lifting of her spirits left a palpable impression in his mind; he presumed he'd spoken the right words, and was profoundly grateful for his natural ability to perceive emotion and intent.

If this happened to be a consequence of Hermione's mysterious feminine ailments, then Tom did not think anyone else could have managed it better. Another person could hug Hermione and speak consoling words—a hypothetical (and highly unrealistic) situation that was unpleasant to even consider—but there was no one else who could perceive what she felt, and be confirmed that his words were taken to heart rather than taken as words spoken out of turn.

On the last day of holiday, Tom woke early for his pre-arranged meeting with Nott.

They'd planned this on the day of Tom's birthday. Nott had had no need of train timetables or Muggle chauffeurs; the boy had Apparated directly to the Riddle House, arriving earlier than all the other guests and bearing news of their success. The enchanted letters had done their work, the enemy sympathisers had been neutralised; it had been a quiet and discreet job, with the sole proof of their triumph printed as an inconsequential footnote in the Daily Prophet's social announcements section, a page at the back of the paper dedicated to obituaries, anniversary commemoratives, and declarations of betrothal.

Notices of Deaths:
Grozbiecki, Kazimierz — Passed on Sunday, Dec. 24, 1944, St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, London. Witnessed by Healer McIlwrick and Healer Attendant Gordon. A repairman for astrological equipment contracted by prominent Diagon Alley businesses of Wiseacre's, Beringer's, and South Side Second-Hand Goods, Mr. Grozbiecki presented himself to St. Mungo's reception staff before collapsing in the waiting room and falling unconscious. He could not be revived. Healers pronounced his death as caused by an artefact malfunction in his workroom. Mr. Grozbiecki's body was claimed by a friend of his family and will be transported and laid to rest in his hometown of Poznań. We express our sincerest sympathies and wish that he may find comfort and beloved companionship in what lies beyond.

Townshend, Fabiana — Passed on Sunday, Dec. 24, 1944, her home in Skegness, Lincolnshire. Survived by her family: her son, Mr. Regis Townshend, daughter-by-marriage Mrs. Susanne Townshend, her grandchildren Willard (36), Norwick (32), Violet (25), Engelbert (18). Her daughter, Mrs. Richilda Hittock, son-by-marriage Mr. Lester Hittock, grandchildren Edith (33), Mordecai (25)...

The section had been been sliced out of the newspaper spread, cutting through a tedious list of bereaved family members who'd waited out their dear old Nan's last breath, just to make sure that none of them took anything from the house that wasn't a properly agreed-upon portion of the inheritance.

It was somewhat concerning that one of their 'volunteers' had retained enough of his senses to Floo to the wizarding hospital, but there was a benefit in having his death recorded on paper, proving that what they'd done had produced results. Nott hadn't got word of what had happened to the three other letters they'd mailed off the same day, so Tom was forced to presume that they'd worked as intended, without unanticipated surprises, as the late Mr. Grozbiecki had had the misfortune of giving them.

A success in Tom's book, though it took him some time to convince Nott of it.

"Doesn't it bother you," Nott had said, when Tom had invited him into his bedroom and cast charms on the walls and corridor to detect intruders. "That we've just... killed someone? Several someones."

"Are you having a stroke of conscience?" Tom asked. "Need I remind you that your family poisoned wells to drive off Muggle villagers."

"Yes," said Nott, "but they were Muggles."

"And these were all foreigners."

"But they were wizards."

"Is that important?" said Tom. "I've never seen you have any trouble deciding that some wizards were inherently better than others. Betters like you and me. And lessers like that half-breed oaf, Rubeus Hagrid."

"By that, I meant that someone of Hagrid's origins should dedicate himself to positions to which he's best suited—an estate retainer, stablehand, or labourer. Leave the thinking and leading to others. We're all wizards, obviously, but some of us are better wizards. More capable of certain positions, and if that just happens to be the important ones..." Nott shrugged. "Well, I suppose that's life. Nowhere did I say that our lessers should be condemned to death."

"Death, versus a life of common labour and indignity," Tom remarked. "There's not much of a difference between them, is there?"

"Riddle," Nott spoke abruptly, "do you know much about the workings of the soul?"

Tom scoffed. "It's all rubbish, whatever you've been told. I don't believe it. Yes, we carry around souls—without it, the Dementors would be completely useless—but I don't believe in superstitious nonsense." Tom flapped the half-sheet of newspaper at Nott. "'What lies beyond'. The Next Great Adventure. If we go there together one day, if they haven't made that part up too, I'll gladly tell them that I talked you into committing acts of sin. There, you're absolved."

Tom tapped Nott on the chest with the tip of his wand.

"It's no divine blessing, but I expect that I'm the closest you'll get," said Tom, in his most serious voice. "I, by the powers invested unto me by the badge of the Head Boy, dub thee immaculate, now and henceforward."

Nott pressed a hand to his chest, turning away from Tom. For an instant, Tom thought he looked uneasy, but the moment passed, and they returned to their discussion on the logistical requirements of collecting and storing Basilisk parts after their Hogwarts graduation.

Tom didn't think much about conflicts of conscience; the concept never crossed his own mind when he acted or spoke. He deemed it an affliction suffered by some distant others, like faith or poverty or a penchant for strong drink, and he paid it little heed unless it intruded upon his personal interests. And his interests were simple: ensure that people did what he wanted them to do. If they did, it was thus that they proved their usefulness to him; if they didn't, they proved their lack thereof, and could be discarded without further consideration.

Nott's usefulness had been cultivated these past few years, carefully tended, fertilised, and pruned when necessary, like a plant on a trellis. The fruits of Nott's loyalty were accepted by Tom as his due. Their current arrangement had been to their mutual advantage, and Tom had not considered the possibility of Nott dithering about it, this far along in their planning.

They met after breakfast, in the wooded path outside Nott's home. Tom Apparated, recalling his first and strongest impressions of the place: dim light filtering through a stand of forest in full leaf; the ground beneath his feet springy with mouldering litter; a dampness that never went away, dripping from the canopy and in every clammy, indrawn breath. An unspoiled slice of the English countryside, untouched by plough or axe, a wizarding weald preserved in full growth and protected from the course of seasons and the greed of Muggle surveyors.

He felt his body compressed into un-space, the nothingness that connected one location to the next, the discomfort fading as he was ejected out the other end, like sausage from a meat grinder. Tom didn't stumble this time; he kept his balance as he completed the proper half-turn the Ministry instructor had taught him, wand at the ready. Not drawn, but at hand.

The air was different here, not like Yorkshire's, which was also damp—a chill, miasmic dampness that brought out pneumonic coughs and itchy chilblains—and lightly suffused with the familiar character of burnt coal and firewood. This air carried a strong vegetal aroma; if a smell could have a colour, then Yorkshire's would be murky grey, and this one a lively green. Like the Hogwarts greenhouses, there was a trace of magic in the atmosphere. Perhaps, mused Tom, it came from the standing stones on the path, or the trees, ancient oaks with gnarled branches of wand-calibre timber.

A dog barked, the sound growing louder and louder, resolving in a pair of figures lurching around a bend in the path: Nott, dragged forward by his leashed dog, which woofed and whined and danced around his feet, stopping to nose at every stone and tree along the way.

"Good morning," said Tom, watching Nott straighten himself out and untangle the leash from around his knees. "You look well."

"Kind of you to notice," said Nott, sounding out of breath. "I told Mother I was taking the dog out; she didn't question it. I can only remove the silencing collar when I'm past the estate bounds, so it's always a very exciting event whenever it happens. As you can see." Nott patted his dog, a rough-coated wolfhound, standing shoulder-high at his waist. The dog butted its head against Nott's chest, barking happily. "For centuries, families have petitioned Hogwarts to allow students to bring their dogs, but the motion has never passed the annual Governors' assembly. An estate hound would destroy a school dormitory in the time between breakfast and lunch."

"I've never liked dogs," Tom remarked. "Whatever the Governors say about the rules, I rule that dogs aren't allowed in dormitories. Not mine, at least."

"That's rich. You're the one with a—" Nott glanced both ways, then muttered, "—a Basilisk!"

"I keep it outdoors; that's what matters," said Tom. He could not imagine bringing the Basilisk into his dorm, even if it begged him for the privilege. Its infringement of Tom's privacy in the bathroom was too much. Tom had reason to suspect that the Basilisk had found his dormitory window and watched him during the night; it had once or twice hinted that it knew a cure for Tom's odd habit of hissing in his sleep.

"But what I do with my Basilisk is neither here nor there," continued Tom. "Do you have what I wanted?"

Nott slipped one hand under his robe, rummaging through the contents of his satchel, the other hand pushing his dog's nose away from the flap. "You had your breakfast already, leave it alone... Where did I put it... Ah! Here."

He handed Tom a list of names, one that Tom had given him earlier. It wasn't Tom's Master List, the original document he'd taken from the Ministry's archives last year. This was a dictated copy, names only, without the addresses or matriculation dates. As Tom glanced at the page, he noticed that half of the names were marked with pencil tickmarks on the side, a handful of names at the bottom circled in red ink, and the remaining handful scored through with blue ink.

"You told me that you wanted me to separate the list into groups," said Nott. "We have the most complete genealogical records held in private collection in the entirety of the British Isles, but most of these are British families and their various offshoots in Quimper, Launceston, Salem, and Roanoke. We only have reliable records on European families if they've married into a British bloodline. In the infrequent instances that it happened, it's usually a French or Walloon family, and usually married to a Malfoy or Rosier, who trace their origins to France and don't have as many reservations as the rest of us do about dipping toes into Continental waters."

"I was told that your records traced the blood of the best families in all of Europe," said Tom.

"The best families in Europe are British!" Nott replied, then quickly added, "But as you asked, I did find some references for the leading Germanic families in Vienna, Brandenburg, and to a lesser extent, Augsburg and Prague." He pointed to the names. "The circled ones are direct members of good families. Easy to find. I counted anyone with a Von or a Zu before the surname. Gerhard zu Eichfeld-Mureck, Ranulph von Teschen. The ticks are for the descendants of maternal lines and cadet branches, and also include close relations or members of good family whose origins lie outside the German nations. Marenka Erdődy, Salome Kopácsy, Sigismund Pacek, Aloys Andrássy, Feliks Strattman, Sabina Wilczek, and so on.

"The last category are what I'd call the 'commoners'. The names that I couldn't trace to any major ancestry or genealogical reference, or were so frequent I couldn't associate any historical significance to them. I need more time with that. The records were hazy once they went too far east or north, and the translation quality was spotty. These ones here—" Nott pointed to several names, "—are Latin transliterations of names originally written in Cyrillic script. And those transliterations are inconsistent, to say the least—do you know how difficult it is to write such a language? Their alphabet has individual consonant phonemes for tch, schtsch, and shh..."

Nott made three different sounds, all of which resembled the noise a child would make blowing bubbles through their straw into a glass of malted milk.

Tom interrupted Nott in the middle of his verbal dissertation on the distinctions of Ruthenian phonetics. "Which of these names can be definitively confirmed as commoners?"

"Well, I can't be perfectly sure about all of them, without access to more thorough resources and a better translator. But," said Nott, jabbing at the centre of the parchment, at a pair of names marked with blue scores. "These two here, I'm quite certain."

"'Linde Tischl' and 'Diether Hübner'. Interesting."

"The name 'Tischl' is derived from the occupation of 'Tischler', a cabinetmaker," explained Nott. "In wizarding occupations, a skilled woodworker whose craft encompasses magical trunks, portrait frames, and fine furniture. Excluding wandcraft and broomsticks; those are, hah, a separate branch of the woodworking trades. The other one, 'Hübner', denotes the owner of a minor property, of a size to be managed by a single household without servants. Neither gives a clear indication that they're Mud—Muggleborns—but the names are common enough among Muggles. No illustrious lineage there."

"Good," said Tom, nodding. "Those will do. Have you prepared the envelopes?"

"What!" Nott cried. "You're sending them right now?"

"Of course," Tom said impatiently, "why else would I have asked to meet here? Not out of personal convenience to you."

"But I need to do more research—the Nordic and Baltic wizarding communities have their own family pedigrees that I've scarcely had a chance to touch—"

"The research can come later. You have two names right now. Term starts tomorrow. This is our opportunity."

Tom nudged a resistant Nott back up the path to the front gate, the dog trotting at their heels. It sniffed at Tom's shoes, prompting Tom to glare down at it. He stared the dog in the eyes with a light trickle of power to impress his will upon it. The dog hunched over, a low growl building in its chest, and avoided him for the rest of the walk, staying so close to Nott that the other boy was in constant danger of tripping over a wagging tail or hairy paws.

They passed through the gate without incident, only pausing to allow Nott to fix a thick golden collar around the dog's neck. A gravel path turned off the front drive, marking a boundary between the grassy clearing around the sweeping buttresses of the cathedral and outbuildings, and the circle of trees of the surrounding forest. It led straight to the owlery.

Nott finally spoke when they approached the owlery treehouse. "Are you going to tell me where you got the names?"

"Your ignorance on the matter is your insurance," said Tom.

"So I'm privileged to be ignorant of vital information?"

"Exactly."

Nott sniffed.

They climbed the steps to the owl platform, leaving dog sitting forlorn at the base of the tree, unable to ascend the rope-and-board staircase. Nott paced around the rows of square cubbies, muttering to himself, and after some deliberation, picked out two owls: a medium-sized owl with light grey feathers—plain, unobtrusive, indistinguishable from the hardy public messenger owls; the second was a tawny creature with a broad wingspan, delicate furred legs, and elegant white markings across its back. A private owl for formal correspondence, of the kind used by Hogwarts School Governors to write to the Headmaster, or a Ministry of Magic department director delivering offers of employment to the best students of the latest crop of Hogwarts graduates.

Nott drew two envelopes out of his bag, thick ivory parchment folded into a rectangular shape with an open flap at the top. The inside of the flap was covered in lines of glossy black script, the head of each line an intricate knot of runic phrases. To Tom, it resembled a monk's illuminated manuscript.

"Well?" said Nott. "Aren't you going to do the honours?"

Tom handed over two corked vials of Basilisk venom, then took his own list out of his pocket.

"Tischl. Hübner. Let's see..." Paper rustled. Tom turned to the other side of the page. "'Linde Tischl. Daintry Street. Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.'"

"And Mr. Hübner?"

"Daintry Street, Stoke-on—"

Nott clapped a hand to his forehead. "They live together, Riddle."

"Yes, and?" said Tom. "It's a Sunday morning. They'll both be in."

The names had been on the bottom of the list, one after the next, indicating that they had been entered into the Ministry's archive records within a small window of time. He scanned the listing. He was right, the dates were close, within a few days of each other.

Linde Tischl (matric. 1931) — Registered wizarding residence in Muggle locale on 4 April, 1938. Applied for remote Apparition Point inspection on 4 April, 1938. Applied for Wizarding Residential Warding Scheme Permit (A4 Area Muggle-Repelling Charmwork; A7 Street-frontage Visual Concealment Charmwork; G6 Anti-Apparition Anchored Ward).
Diether Hübner (matric. 1931) — Applied for Stage 2 Apparition Point Permit in Muggle Locality on 6 April, 1938. Approval granted on 18 April, 1938 for remote concealed Apparition Point within 1/4 furlong radius of registered wizarding domicile.

He hadn't thought much of it, hadn't thought of those names as representations of people. If they weren't Special, then they weren't exactly People, in his private sense of the word. They were merely... there, shapes in the background, as everpresent and eternal as English weather, train delays, and the exorbitant price of eggs and milk. In his plans, one name was the same as any other. He wasn't going to befriend them, speak to them, or engage in any sort of personal communication to ascertain how deserving they were of the fate he was granting them.

It was safe to admit that he spent more time thinking about his own life than that of the dozens of names on the list.

"How do you think it'll go, Riddle?" said Nott, his voice taking on a shrill note of exasperation. "One person fetches the mail, and opens theirs first. The second person isn't going to open the second envelope when they've been distracted by the screaming. The last thing we want is for the letter to be examined by someone who knows what they're doing."

"The last thing I want to do is waste an opportunity when I have it," said Tom. "So all we have to do is make sure both of them open theirs. Post-haste."

"I've started studying magical compulsions," Nott said. "They aren't mentioned in advanced enchantment textbooks, but I think we have some out-of-print grimoires in our library that might do the trick. If I alter the enchantment to confuse or compel the recipient—"

"How long will that take?"

"Erm," said Nott, scratching his nose, "ten months with testing? It's taken around four months to perfect the envelopes, and I've been adjusting the newer ones still."

Tom shook his head. "There's a faster way."

"You can't rush enchantments! Even a master following a set pattern needs the time to impart it onto a physical medium."

"I didn't say we had to use enchantments. A spell will do." Tom glanced at the sky. In winter, the sun rose at half-past eight, and he'd left the Riddle House at nine. The sky was dim, the sun's light obscured by trees and a blanket of gloomy cloud cover. Poor visibility. But it served to his advantage. "Hmm..."

"What is it?" said Nott, his expression torn between two extremes of curiosity and aversion.

"'Stoke-on-Trent'," recited Tom from the list. "It's a mill town in the Midlands. If I'm correct, it can't be more than fifty miles from here."

"What does that matter?" Nott scoffed. "I've never been there. And if you aren't sure of the distance, then neither have you. Apparating's out, and I doubt they'd invite us in by Floo for a spot of breakfast. Or for official business. 'Hello there, friends, we're Ministry inspectors here to visit you on a Sunday morning!' Anyone who's ever had business with the Ministry knows that they start dawdling at their desks after they finish lunch on Friday, and don't start up again until teatime Monday."

"Lestrange bragged that his Cleansweep topped at eighty miles an hour," said Tom. "Have you ever tried going top speed on a flying carpet?"

"You want to go there in person," said Nott incredulously. He groaned. "'A spell will do'."

"It's a good job that you've already picked us an owl," said Tom. "We don't need to know how to find the address when an owl can do it for us."

Air travel was a luxury for Muggles. Aeroplane fare for the trans-Atlantic route cost £110 per head, for a journey of less than a day, with no fare grades outside of Expensive and Even More Expensive. The equivalent London to New York route by ship cost £35 for the lowest class ticket, took five days, and offered meal options of Milk Gruel for breakfast and Meat-Inspired Gruel for supper.

Having known this, Tom had taken to his First Year flying classes with great zeal, studying how the other Slytherin boys had summoned broomsticks into their hands with a single firm command, how they threw their legs over the floating wooden handles in a graceful arc that never had their feet make contact with the broomstick bristles, and how they arranged their robes so they wouldn't catch the wind and drag like sails. Tom had no fear of heights (nor anything else), and picking the knack up quickly, was not assigned to remedial lessons or judged to be any different to the wizard-raised boys who had learned to fly sooner than they'd learned to walk.

He was a good flyer—better than adequate. He was certainly better than Hermione, who didn't like going past head-high, and fretted about the likelihood of flashing her knickers or falling from a height, because there was nothing worse than missing lessons and having to study the material from someone else's notes. Since First Year, however, Tom hadn't done much flying. He hadn't joined the Quidditch reserves in Second Year, and when he'd begun selling his articles in Fourth Year, the thought of buying a racing broom with his newly acquired fortune had never crossed his mind. He'd decided to wait for his Apparition License, which was both instantaneous and free, and until then, he'd suffer through the rail system, which had involved much less suffering after his grandparents had set him up to ride the First Class gravy train.

He'd forgotten how inconvenient flying could be. Or rather, he'd never found out what real flying was like. Tom had never flown in real weather, with a co-passenger, or at a higher altitude than a few dozen feet.

Flying at an altitude of seven hundred feet, his vision obscured by low-lying clouds and his collar rimed with ice, was not what he'd expected. But he refused to complain, ducking behind Nott who sat in front, as the boy scanned the sky with his opera glasses, searching for the bobbing black dot of the owl.

For a short flight of under fifty miles, Nott had chosen the fancy private messenger owl. It wasn't as hardy as the plain one, which could be expected to deliver a full tin of biscuits to northern Scotland in time for the breakfast rush, and be back before dinner no worse for wear. The tawny owl's broader wingspan lent it speed for fast deliveries, and Nott had promised it could reach Stoke in three-quarters of an hour.

Tom hadn't predicted that a fast delivery meant having to brave a howling wind or the loss of feeling in his fingers, as he clung to the edges of Nott's carpet, the tassels of which had gone crispy and white. It took all his effort to hold the Disillusionment over the both of them, along with a small Shield Charm that protected their faces from flying shards of ice. Neither of them had thought to bring a pair of flying goggles, as worn by Quidditch players in inclement weather. Nott maintained a minor charm to keep them warm, but it sputtered in and out as his attention wavered, tracing the path of the messenger owl keeping just abreast of them.

England from this height was reduced to a patchwork of snow-coated farms and tiny villages, the monotonous view broken up by the iron line of a railroad, a slow-moving canal bobbing with broken ice and tarpaulin-covered barges, and the outskirts of the city of Derby passing down below. The owl flew straight, avoiding main roads and major settlements, so Tom wasn't concerned about being spotted by Muggles, or Muggles wondering why there was an owl flying about in daylight. Muggles weren't observant; plenty of his fellow Hogwarts students wandered around King's Cross before the Express' departure, and in his years of experience, no commuters or porters had ever seen fit to comment on a child wearing a woollen jumper with the Hogwarts school crest emblazoned on the breast.

Their journey terminated when the owl alighted in a dingy alley behind a narrow street of two-storey row houses. Soot-grimed brick, blacked-out windows, pebbledash paving, and battered dustbins: this was evidence of a working neighbourhood, it brought to mind Tom's early years in London—Wool's Orphanage had been situated in a similar area. Tom rarely gave thought to the life he'd lived just a few years ago, and seeing this now, he couldn't help but view it from the perspective of a wizard.

It was a grim sight.

Dirty snow clung to every flat surface, and dirt to every vertical. Each house in the row had a tradesman's door; to the left of the door was a window covered in a metal grate, and on the right, a cast iron hatch meant for coal deliveries. This was no posh Victorian terrace in London's Belgravia. To save space, the houses had no gardens, stables, or servants' quarters; the residents here weren't the sort to have hired help or private motorcars. From between the two second-storey windows, several houses had frozen clothing strung out on a laundry line. They rustled and scraped against the walls, and that was the only noise Tom could hear, with the exception of the solemn hoot-hoot of the owl as it landed on one windowsill, poked its head through a gap in the bars, and began tapping at the grubby glass.

Tom dragged Nott behind the neighbour's dustbins. Nott, who had been in the process of shaking off his ice-covered carpet and stuffing it into his satchel, lost his balance and toppled to the ground.

"This is the house," Tom hissed. "Give me the binoculars."

Silently, Nott handed them over. Tom snatched them and adjusted the settings.

From within the house, the curtains were peeled aside, and the sash lifted up.

A woman stood in the window, peering down and studying the owl. She was blonde, not a tow blonde like Nott's mother, but hair a dishwater shade, coiled up in rollers. (Tom was surprised to learn that witches used hair rollers, as he'd taken it to be something only Muggle ladies did. In fact, witches soaked their hair in a potion before setting their rollers for the night. The resulting curls lasted well over a week, as the potion was washed out during regular bathing. Mr. Bertram's readers preferred hair potions to the more effort-intensive and shorter-lived wand curling method.)

The woman in the window looked recently awoken. Under a plain wool day robe, Tom could see the edges of a dowdy-looking white shift, buttoned right to the throat. The owl, a sleek, well-kept creature of elegant proportions, proffered its delivery and hooted softly.

Tom drew his wand. At his side, Nott stiffened.

The woman took the letters from the owl. The owl winged away from the sill and landed on the lid of the dustbin behind which they'd hidden, cocking its head and blinking down at Nott and Tom.

Nott flapped his hand at it. "Shoo! Go home!"

She turned one envelope over, inspecting it for any sign or seal of the sender's identity. The view through the binoculars proved it was the one with her name, Linde Tischl, in Nott's handwriting, the letters finished with elaborate sweeping curlicues. Hermione had commented on Nott's formal handwriting before, and Tom disliked her praise of it; it was terribly inefficient, and a waste of parchment. The envelope itself was heavy, half an inch thick, constructed of premium vellum, and the contents obviously more significant than a casual note or invitation card.

The owl hooted.

The woman glanced at the owl, her finger on the flap of the envelope, about to pop it open with the edge of her nail.

"Confundo," Tom murmured, pointing his wand at her.

She set the envelope down without opening it or inspecting it further. It was best that both envelopes were opened at the same time, if the records were correct about there being two people residing at the same address.

With the woman's eyes bleary from the charm's effects, Tom took advantage, popping his head over the edge of the bin and meeting her eyes, pressing down with the full force of his will.

Close the window. Undo the locks on the door. Disable any intruder charms. Do not open the door.

He felt some resistance; the command he projected to her was laboured and slow, each word needing to be forcefully shoved from his mind and into hers, like mud through a sieve. As he pushed, sweat beading at his temple, he saw small snatches of memory:

Torn papers were fed into a burning brazier, black writing curling up into threads of black smoke. A basket on a writing desk was filled with more curling fragments of parchment, piled into a great yellow heap like sawdust on the floor of a horse's stable.

Basking in the warmth of a freshly-stoked fireplace, a thick-limbed man with a ruddy complexion and a heavy fur robe sat on a comfortable armchair. He looked like a traditional wizard with a traditional wizarding beard, long and luxurious moustaches and whiskers with silver tips, matching the silvered fur on his robe collar. A slim book lay open on his lap, showing smooth yellow parchment and an animated engraving. He read aloud from it; the cover, shown as he turned the page, was bound in fine leather and embossed with a strange triangular symbol.

"Ah, was soll man von solchen Wilden auch anderes erwarten, Lindelein?" said the man, gazing fondly down at a blonde-haired girl sitting on the floor, her head resting against his knee.

Through his lessons with Dumbledore, Tom had learned that Legilimency was more than just a magical staring contest. It wasn't categorised as a dark art, because its core intent wasn't to cause harm or master one's enemies: it was a magical discipline whose core was empathy; taken to its zenith, a trained practitioner developed a complete understanding of another human mind.

At Hogwarts, Tom had tested the skills he'd learned in Dumbledore's office on the Acromantula, delving into its memories to weed out any traces of opposition until it posed no resistance to Tom's explorations. That had been simple. This wasn't so easy; it was odd not being able to delve into the woman's mind at will, and he felt the force of her will pushing back against his, fighting against his entry. He was determined, and gritted his teeth.

Unlock the door. Open both envelopes at the same time.

He repeated this over and over, reminded of the time he'd heaved himself into Hermione's bedroom late one evening last December, faint and shivering and limbs numb with shock. One step, one step more, one step, one step more. That had been his mantra, an incessant beat drummed into his mind, swallowing every other feeling or thought inside him. Pain, distress, panic, the blow at the revelation of his mother's fatal weakness, everything but the determination to keep moving.

The woman turned away from the window. The sash slid down, the curtains closed. The doorknob rattled and went still.

Nott glanced at Tom. "Did you do that?"

"Yes," said Tom, his tone brusque. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, his undershirt sticky and damp under his jumper. He loosened his necktie and breathed deeply of the rubbish-infused air. "When I'm concentrating like that, do try not to interrupt."

Nott looked both ways down the alley and rushed for the door, casting a Silencing Charm at the hinges and his feet. They entered, Nott quietly shutting the tradesman's door behind them, muttering to himself on the runework carvings on the wood panels, as Tom cast about the small laundry room, searching for the best place to hide.

"Anti-Muggle ward? Normal, for this kind of neighbourhood. Anti-Apparition ward? How unusual. And expensive, too; only official buildings and businesses get it done—keeps thieves from Apparating in and making off with a new broomstick or the money chest. There's no reason why an average wizard would get one for his home..."

The walls were bare brick coated in cracking plaster, black with mildew in the corners. Much of the room was occupied by a wooden laundry mangle, sharing its territory with a variety of cleaning apparatus: a folded clotheshorse propped against the far wall, an upended tin tub, and a squat cast-iron boiler, dusty with disuse. It was obvious that this was built as a Muggle house, taken over by wizards. It was, Tom thought, eyeing the clothes iron rusted to the boiler hood, the last place anyone would ever expect to look for a wizard.

They ducked behind the laundry mangle as the woman, envelopes in hand, pushed open a swinging door into what appeared to be a tiny combination kitchen and dining room.

"Diether!" called the woman. The kitchen door swung shut. In a house like this, the interior walls were built of thin plywood; they could hear her very clearly. "Post!"

"Sonst etwas, außer Zeitung?" a man's voice replied.

"Ja, ein Paket für uns!"

"Noch haben wir Schinken, lass uns erst einmal frühstücken, danach kümmern wir uns um das Paket," said the man. Tom heard furniture scrape the floor, and the clatter of cooking implements banging on the range. "Es sind nur zweihundert Gramm Schinken, weil der Metzger mir gestern nicht mehr geben wollte..."

Porcelain clinked. Something was scraped off metal. The smell of sizzling fat leaked out from the gap between the door and the lumpy linoleum floor.

"What are they saying?" Nott asked in a low voice.

"Don't know," Tom whispered back. He was closest to the kitchen door. "Something about food, I suppose. I think they're eating now. They haven't opened the envelopes yet."

"Should we jump in? I can cast the Imperius on one, if you take the other."

"I cast a Confundus outside," said Tom. "If we use those spells inside the house, it can be detected by anyone who knows what to look for." The Auror handbook had given him a brief overview of the various types of Dark Detectors available to Ministry officials. He didn't expect his present misadventures would merit official attention, but Dark Detectors were relatively common, and any wizard could purchase one from a Diagon Alley shop.

"If you'd given me warning, I might have nicked an artefact from Father's office."

"It doesn't matter," said Tom. "Unless you're completely inept, you can make people do what you want without resorting to Unforgivables."

"Few of us are as 'gifted' as you are," remarked Nott, with a sour look on his face.

In the next room, the two Germans ate their breakfast, silverware clattering off their plates. At one point, they heard the scritch-scritch of a knife scraping over toasted bread. Nott's stomach rumbled and he licked his lips; Tom shot him a quizzical look, but made no comment.

"So this is what you meant by attending to the 'future of Magical Britain'," Nott whispered, crouching on the floor beside Tom. He bundled the voluminous tails of his robe over one arm, wincing at the plaster dust sprinkled over the fine fabric. "I'd assumed you had something grander in mind than the Chamber of Secrets. And now we're... here."

"You trusted me to keep to my word," said Tom. "I haven't lied."

"No. But you haven't told me how you knew the addresses of a bunch of Grindel—"

"Shh!" Tom hissed. "It's started."

The lives of the impoverished class—and Tom counted this as any person who had to save their coins to make a purchase of such household necessities as tea or laundry starch—were the same across the towns of Merrie Olde England. But what separated the city of Tom's birth from the dozens of working towns whose residents earned their daily pittance in the mills or down the mines was London's sheer population. Working citizens of London didn't return to their homes after work to waste their time with quiet prayer and contemplation. Some did, of course, but the ones that didn't set a conspicuous character for the rest of the borough.

As a child, Tom had overheard his share of drunken disputes, alleyway scraps, and domestic quarrels. Wool's had no wireless, only a reading room whose educational value declined in the months after Christmas, as the most interesting books from each donation delivery were taken away for private use. There was simply not much entertainment on offer to the poor soul who couldn't afford the penny cinema and refused to demean himself by shining shoes or hawking newspapers. To relieve the boredom of waiting for his eighteenth birthday, Tom had been reduced to amusing himself with the antics of his fellow orphans and their neighbours.

This domestic disturbance began as many others had. A shatter of glass, a woman's wordless scream, high and piercing, like the sound of live Chizpurfles—a tiny, crab-like species of magical vermin—being tossed into a bubbling cauldron during a Potions demonstration. Then a man howled with pain, wooden furniture thudded on cheap linoleum, and heavy footsteps shook the floor, retreating from Tom's hiding spot by the back door.

"They're not staying put," whispered Nott. "Ought we to do something about that?"

"If they're going for the medicine chest, a bezoar won't cure them," said Tom smugly.

"A bezoar won't, but Basilisk venom does have a cure," said Nott. "Phoenix tears."

"They couldn't have got their hands on that. Phoenix tears are one of the rarest magical substances in existence."

The next room over, crockery smashed. A man groaned and gasped for breath.

"One could say the same for Basilisk venom," Nott pointed out. "And you've been handing it out to strangers."

"Alright," said Tom, sighing. "Come on, then."

When they entered the kitchen, they found the dining table toppled over, scraps of parchment confetti on the floor, coffee splattered against the walls, and a woman curled up on herself, holding the tattered shreds of a smoking hand against the perforated flesh of her cheek. Nott stopped in his tracks and looked at Tom, who was observing the scene with an academic sort of curiosity.

The Basilisk venom had drifted onto the wooden table, which was pitted with black marks. A foul vapour rose from it, the stench comparable to that of a jar of canned vegetables opened after a few seasons of improper storage. The woman's flesh, having taken the brunt of the exploding envelope, had bubbled, her skin rising with pockets of clear liquid; it was interspersed with red patches of exposed muscle tissue, rimmed with melting dribbles of subcutaneous fat. On the scattered dishware, the remnants of bread and fried ham had dissolved into an oily sludge. But the dishes themselves, of glazed china, were perfect and untouched.

"She's still alive," Nott murmured, holding his robes above the mess, like a dainty young lady over a mud puddle.

"If any of it got into her mouth, then not for much longer," said Tom.

"Don't you think this is a bit..." Nott sought for words.

"Cruel?" suggested Tom.

"...Excessive," said Nott, settling at last. "It's one thing to send trapped letters to people, another to watch them suffer like this. The former is cruel, I suppose. But the latter is downright morbid."

"You go look for the other fellow, then," said Tom, rolling his eyes. "I'll take care of her."

Nott tiptoed past him, avoiding the woman, and pushed through to the room adjoining the kitchen, a small parlour with street-facing windows.

Tom bent over the woman. Her eyes were rolling in their sockets, her eyelids flecked with a pattern of tiny, lace-like holes, her cheeks glistening with a steady trickle of lymph fluid. She hadn't cried out in some time; Tom guessed that she must have breathed some of the vapourised venom.

"Stupefy."

There was a spell to end things quickly and painlessly, to give the woman the closest thing to mercy, but Tom refrained from using it. Efficient as it was—and as much as Tom wanted to see how it worked with his own eyes, having read the descriptions from various textbooks—it was immensely powerful and left magical traces for days and weeks afterward, unlike Basilisk venom, so potent a substance that it consumed itself within minutes of being exposed to organic materials.

With a scowl of distaste—he didn't want to touch her—Tom used his wand to raise the sleeve of the woman's robe, up to her shoulder. Many months ago, he'd been told that the flesh under the joint, where arm met body, was the point that the blood ran warmest. This time, it was an almost routine task. He lifted one limp arm and found the spot; without the camouflaging effect of grey skin and silver scales, it was easy to find. He cast a charm, cutting a tiny, quarter-inch nick over the blue line of an artery, before drawing a pair of corked vials from his pocket. A dab of Basilisk venom, a dribble of Dittany, and the wound sealed itself closed. Tom smoothed her robe back down, noting that her knees, drawn up to her chest, were an offensive sight. The skin was a strange combination of cheese curd white and mottled purple bruises, veined through with black, web-like striations.

In the parlour, Nott was repairing an urn over the fireplace, siphoning up handfuls of glittering sand that had sprayed all over the carpet.

"Apparition's blocked, so he tried to go for the Floo," Nott explained. He jerked his head over his shoulder. "He saw me, and I disarmed him on the spot. Are you going to search the house?"

The man was sprawled over the foot of the narrow staircase, leaving no room to walk. Tom Levitated him back to the kitchen and, rather distractedly, took care of him as well, returning to the parlour to see Nott giving the stairs and carpet a good dusting off.

"I've never been in a house this small," said Nott, looking around. The furniture was worn but serviceable, the light fittings were electric, and the bay window that overlooked the street was covered with a thick black cloth, affixed to the window frame with nails. "It's tiny. Not a single Extension Charm. Is this how all Muggles live? I don't see how a proper wizard could stand this; even a portable tent for hunt season is more comfortable than this."

"They must not have wanted to draw attention to themselves," said Tom, taking in the dimensions of the room. Like most terrace-style houses, the rooms were long and rectangular, with shabby wallpaper and high moulded ceilings yellowed with years' worth of tobacco stains left by previous tenants. It was an entirely different aesthetic to the refined Georgian stylings of the Riddle House, or the Gothic romanticism of Nott's family cathedral, wherein gargoyles had been embraced as a linchpin of good taste. Different to the Grangers' suburban home as well, whose interiors had been made to conform to Mrs. Granger's standards of hygiene and modernity.

The upstairs was as plain and Muggle-ish as the downstairs. A shared bedroom, a small bathroom with toilet, washstand, and basin. A linen cupboard, smelling of cedar. But the second bedroom was the true prize, converted into a study, and the clearest evidence that this house belonged to wizards.

The windows were covered, and it took a minute or two for Tom to find the electric light switch; Nott was no help in that regard whatsoever. Where the rest of house had been made to be unremarkable, so that anyone who happened to look in when the front door opened and the residents came in and went out assumed nothing out of the usual. But this room, on the second-floor facing the alley, was far from it. A floor-to-ceiling map of the British Isles had been pasted to the wall, the legend and titles in German, but the names distinguishable: London, Wimbourne, Falmouth, Tutshill, Godric's Hollow, and Hogsmeade. The largest wizarding settlements in Britain.

Nott had wandered over the creaking floorboards to the desk, piled with small booklets. He'd picked one up, the title of which read, 'Für das Größere Wohl', and Tom recognised it as the first of a series of pamphlets authored by Grindelwald, in the decades before his transition to formal governance. They were in German, but the printing quality of these was better than the translated copies Mr. Pacek had given him years ago. Tom had lost one of them, torn in half and eaten by a goat outside The Hog's Head, and since then he'd never got around to replacing it.

"How much room do you have in your bag?" asked Tom. "We'll take the lot."

He shovelled them into Nott's arms, then continued poking about the study. There was a hamper of torn parchments under the desk. At the wall opposite the map, a fireplace butted into the room, its claw-footed iron basket empty of coal briquettes; it instead held white ashes and shreds of paper. Tom poked at the scraps with his wand. The paper crumbled into dust.

"Do you see any incriminating documents?" said Tom. "Secret German code books? Password ciphers?" Roger Tindall had gone on and on about them during Tom's birthday dinner; for someone who hated the public veneration of being one of Britain's Brave Defenders, it was funny how he much he liked to remind Hermione of it at every opportunity. "If they had communication with others in their group, you'd think they'd write in code. Most British wizards wouldn't understand a lick of German, but it's hardly an obscure language."

"It looks like they've been thorough in destroying their papers." Nott had stacked the booklets into groups and was trying to fit them all through the opening in his bookbag, re-arranging the contents so that the flying carpet remained on top. "Check the desk drawers, perhaps they've got something useful in them."

Tom did so. He found a selection of stationery and writing implements; a stack of maps that included a directory of Diagon Alley and several shop catalogues; a small chest of galleons (Tom confiscated them, tying them into a handkerchief and handing them over to Nott); various English dictionaries and O.W.L-level spellbooks (Tom left those), and in the bottom-most drawer, a parcel of rectangular proportions, wrapped in a dense-pile velvet cloth embroidered with runic designs.

"I think I've found something," said Tom, holding the parcel up. It was the size of a large book, not a conventional school textbook, but the one-of-a-kind handwritten antique tomes that populated the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library.

He held his breath, undoing the cords tied on each side. The fabric cover lifted off.

Nott crowded in at his elbow, peering over his shoulder. Tom heard his sharp intake of breath as the first corner was revealed.

"Oh," said Tom, sounding disappointed. "It's a blank portrait frame."

"Turn it to the other side," Nott said, taking it by the edge and flipping it around.

The image of a wizard slumbered within a carved wooden frame, his shoulders rising and falling as he breathed. He was a large, jolly-looking man, his shoulders and belly disappearing off the frame; his beard was at an impressive length, streaked white with age. He must have noticed the movement of his frame, for he cracked open one sleep-crusted eye.

"Lindelein?" he said. "Diether?"

It was the same man as Tom had witnessed in the woman's memories, the one who'd read to her by firelight.

"Who are you?" Tom demanded.

"War da was?" the man demanded in return. "Was suchen Sie in meinem Haus? Einbrecher! Hört mich jemand? Hier ist ein Einbrech—"

"Immobulus," said Nott.

The portrait froze mid-sentence.

Tom glared at Nott. "I was interrogating it!"

"You can't interrogate portraits, not effectively," said Nott, his wand still pointed at the portrait. "They don't learn or understand like real people. If he doesn't speak English now, then he never will. If these people were clever, they'd have a second portrait frame somewhere else, so this wizard—" Nott indicated the frozen image of the wizard, its mouth agape, "—could travel and transmit information. Possibly straight to Europe. It would be only a few sentences at a time, but it's got to be more secure than owls or Portkeys. That's probably why they destroyed their documents: they'd be a liability, once the other side has the information."

"Can we take it?" asked Tom. "I know a man who speaks German."

"He won't co-operate unless he wants to," said Nott. "If he's a relative or friend of the two downstairs, then he knew them during his lifetime. He doesn't know us. And you can't... coerce him into speaking; he's only an imprint. A likeness. Not a real, living being."

"He's of no use to us, then."

"No."

Tom sighed. "Very well. Incendio."

Nott yelped and dropped the portrait, which had quickly caught alight. Tom had been a bit overzealous with the casting (Dumbledore had reprimanded him for that very spell), and the portrait's broad sweeps of oil-based paint made a fast-burning fuel.

What Tom didn't expect was the edge of the portrait falling into a basket of shredded parchment and toppling it over. The fire caught on the dry wicker hamper and, in an instant, spread to the threadbare carpet under their feet.

Nott covered his face with his robe sleeve, holding his bulging bag to his chest. "You burnt it! Whoever's got the other frame will suspect something's up!"

"They won't suspect anything. We'll destroy the evidence." Tom sent a thoughtful look to the coal grate in the fireplace. "If they can burn their evidence, then so can we. Incendio."

This time, Tom was deliberately enthusiastic with the spell. The map on the wall blackened and peeled; the plaster behind it crackled ominously.

They retreated downstairs, where the air was clearer. But not for long. In the kitchen, Tom dumped out a tin of pork lard onto the stovetop to enact a disastrous kitchen accident which resulted in an unfortunate—and fatal—house fire. He tipped the empty tin on its side, overturned the frying pan, and tossed the cooking utensils to the floor. From the parlour, he summoned the wizard's wand where Nott had disarmed him, and the witch's wand from under the cold cabinet. He cast a few Aguamenti charms with each, dropped them on the floor by their owners, and finally inspected his handiwork.

The scatter of objects on the linoleum made a striking tableau, he thought, brushing off his hands. Very avant-garde.

He was almost sorry to set it on fire.

When he was finished in the kitchen, he and Nott Disillusioned themselves and slipped out through the back door.

"How long do you think it'll take for the Muggles to notice?" Tom asked, as they blended into a group of churchgoers carrying hymnbooks and lunch hampers.

"As long as it takes for the fire to destroy the anchor runes in the wards," Nott replied, glancing around at the oblivious Muggles and shying away from any that came close enough to risk accidental contact. "I can see the smoke already." He pointed to the line of roofs, shimmering with heat. "When the house goes up, it'll disconnect the fireplace from the Floo Network. You can expect the Ministry to send investigators on Monday; occupants aren't supposed to connect or disconnect a Floo without giving notice and lodging the proper forms. And paying the fees."

"Don't worry, the Ministry will be as clueless as usual," said Tom. "What a shame it is that no one ever taught these poor wizards that Conjured water won't put out a fat fire."

Nott looked sceptical at Tom's words, handing over Tom's pillaged sack of galleons. "What do you worry about, Riddle? Seven years, and it's still a mystery to me."

"What I'm going to spend this haul on," said Tom, hefting the tied-up handkerchief. It was about five pounds in weight, an approximate value of a hundred galleons. Not a fortune by Nott's measure, but a handsome sum nonetheless—two months' wages for a senior Auror. "Are the shops in Diagon Alley open on Sunday?"

"Why wouldn't they be?"

Tom glanced at the Stoke locals on their way to church. "Oh, no reason at all."

"Well, if we're done here, where's the nearest Apparition point?"

Their paths diverged at a small gap behind several buildings on a corner lot, a concealed spot that allowed wizards to Apparate in a Muggle area without breaking the Statute of Secrecy's rules on conspicuous use of magic. The Ministry-approved wards deflected Muggle attention (it was clear of cigarette ends and the sour smell that drunks left on the way home from the pub), as well as silencing the trademark gunshot sound of Apparition. Nott went first, cleaning the soot and plaster dust off his robes before spinning on his heel and disappearing.

When it was Tom's turn, he didn't go home.

No, he visualised a cobbled street, crowded with timber-framed buildings, upper floors projecting over the crooked walkways below. The wooden beams were stained with age, the door lintels set at an uncomfortable height, but the diamond-paned display windows were aglow with magic. Dozens of wooden signs swayed above the heads of passersby, each one bearing an animated representation of the business within: an owl in flight, a wand performing the looping movement of Lumos, a book with pages flipping back and forth, a pestle grinding away in the bowl of a mortar, a thread wriggling off a bobbin and through the eye of a glinting needle...

The proprietor of the Diagon Alley second-hand shop directed Tom to Glimwitt's, the antiquarian bookseller whose establishment lay at the border between Diagon and Knockturn. To his satisfaction, they had an original copy of Rastrick's Apocrypha of Materiality, in lightly worn condition. It was a rare book from a single print run in 1837, one of seventy-five copies; the asking price came to a total of sixty galleons, but Tom haggled it down to fifty-four galleons and twelve. He made it understood that he was paying in coin, not a book-for-book barter that many of the shop's bibliophile customers came in requesting.

Luncheon had arrived by the time Tom arrived at the Riddle House. Hermione cornered him in his room later, asking him where he'd gone after breakfast. He sat her down on his bed and, in lieu of an answer, presented her with the book, packaged in a gold gift box tied with ribbons, courtesy of the bookseller's gift-wrapping service.

"This must have been expensive," said a pink-cheeked Hermione, peeling aside the layers of tissue paper. She cradled the book to her chest, stroking the spine and smelling the paper, in no hurry to put it down. (Tom found it bizarre; in the past hundred years, no one knew how many people had touched that same book.) "Oh, Tom, you shouldn't have! The library has a copy!"

"I'd been thinking about it," said Tom. "Anyone else who wanted a good mark could have borrowed the book, and there was only the one copy. You'd have been inconsolable if it'd been reserved to the end of term."

He sat down on the bed next to Hermione, sweeping away the pile of ribbons and tissue between them. Hermione leaned against him and opened the book across their laps, sighing in appreciation as the pages were revealed: crisp paper free of ink smudges and scribbles, a scourge of the cheap second-hand textbooks Tom had purchased as a First Year.

"You'll be perfectly prepared for the future now," he said, brushing his knee against hers under the book's open covers. "After all, you have me."

Notes:

Chapter Summary: Hermione feels guilty about mind-wiping Roger. Tom's new middle name is "Slippery Slope". The Basilisk offers mating advice. Nott's mind is blown when he learns about Ш and Щ.
I'm aware that it's annoying when character dialogue suddenly switches to another language. If you watch fan-subtitled anime or read fanfiction based on Japanese franchises, you've probably seen the "All According to Keikaku" meme, or people calling each other "Senpai" and "Baka" out of nowhere. But it just didn't make sense for random Germans in this story to speak English. Yes, I have seen Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, and I didn't like that. I didn't like Johnny Depp as Grindelwald either.

Translation guide:
— "Ah, was soll man von solchen Wilden auch anderes erwarten?" - "What can you expect from such savages?"
("Wilden" = uncivilised peoples, in reference to Muggles.)
— "Sonst etwas, außer Zeitung?" - "Anything other than the newspaper?"
— "Noch haben wir Schinken, lass uns erst einmal frühstücken, danach kümmern wir uns um das Paket..." - "Let's have breakfast, then we'll open the mail. The butcher wouldn't sell me more than 200 grams of ham..."
(Late war rationing, 200g = 1 week's portion for 2 civilian adults.)
— "War da was? Was suchen Sie in meinem Haus? Einbrecher! Hört mich jemand? Hier ist ein Einbrech—" - "What's this, what are you doing in my house? Thief! Can anyone hear me? There's a thief!"

If you feel sad about the deaths in this chapter, remember that Grindelwald's ultimate objective was to dismantle the Statute of Secrecy and turn Muggles into a slave caste under wizards. Tom disagrees with this; he believes his power and intelligence gives him the right to rule, but Tom Logic™ dictates that no one else is allowed to have this privilege.

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