Chapter Text
Mutagenesis
/mjuːtəˈdʒɛnɪsɪs/
noun
BIOLOGY
- the occurrence or induction of genetic mutations
plural noun: mutageneses
Quiet. So still and quiet. The clock was approaching midnight, and there wasn’t a single sound to be heard inside the oppressing walls of the dreary orphanage. The children had long since retreated into the fragile privacies of their bedrooms, and the matrons had most likely done the same.
It was just like any other day; all of them blending seamlessly together in their dullness. Time moved forward, yet for the past nine years, nothing in the orphanage had really changed. And even tonight, as a young boy with sickly pale skin and too harsh eyes waited for the seconds to tick by, everything remained the exact same: still and quiet. It didn’t matter that the boy was going to turn nine in just a matter of minutes. It didn’t matter, since no one’s birthday meant anything here. It didn’t matter, because even if they did, no one would have bothered to remember his.
With those thoughts plaguing the boy’s mind, and the hands of the clock finally moving, the day changed.
And yet, nothing really changed.
Time just kept sluggishly dragging itself onwards without a care for a pause. The quiet remained, making the walls close in on the inhabitants.
Tom let out a sigh. No matter how little he had believed anything would change, it had still been utterly foolish. And yet, he couldn’t help it. There was nothing he wanted more than to burn the whole place down – preferably with the other children and matrons still inside – and start anew, somewhere far away. Somewhere else. Somewhere, anywhere.
The building didn’t catch on fire, didn’t even develop a new crack on the wall, but something still changed.
The next time Tom sucked in a breath, the dull greys of the orphanage blurred in his eyes, and there was the feeling of being yanked away, the universe itself pulling at his navel. His eyes widened, but he didn’t even have the time to blink as the pull already got too much, and his body gave out under the force of it, casting him into a world of unconsciousness.
The orphanage was quiet. So still and quiet. And it would remain so until the early light of the morning would break through the moth-eaten curtains, waking the youngest children first, who would then proceed to wake the matrons with their incessant cries. And then the building would slowly continue its monotonous cycle of life. No one noticing the missing boy, until dusk would be upon them once more. And even then, no one would care. It would just be one less mouth to feed.
Harry woke up to a pounding inside of his head instead of a pounding against his door for once. It was probably still too early even for Aunt Petunia to be awake, but it was hard to tell since his cupboard held neither windows nor a clock. Harry sat up, putting his glasses on, and carefully went to open the door, trying to avoid making any sound in case no one else was truly up yet.
The rest of the Dursleys had spent the previous day visiting a family acquaintance, leaving Harry with Mrs Figg who lived across the street. Uncle Vernon had been in a good mood by the time the Dursleys had returned and had completely forgotten about Harry and his cupboard, thanks to him staying out of sight for the rest of the evening. It had led to the door to remaining unlocked for the entire night. Not wanting to risk reminding anyone of his existence until absolutely necessary, Harry took care to tiptoe as quietly as he could to the kitchen for a glass of water in hopes that it would make the headache go away.
The clock on the kitchen wall was showing that it was only around four in the morning. It meant that if Harry was lucky, he might still be able to catch a few more hours of sleep before there’d be pounding inside and outside of his head.
With a cold glass of water and surrounded by the still and quiet of the house, he made his way back to the cupboard. No one would notice he even left in the first place. With that comforting thought in his mind, he fell back to sleep almost immediately.
And if that early morning he dreamt of another boy, one who looked much like himself and who was suffocated by that very same still and quiet, he’d blame it on the headache and his overactive imagination. The same imagination that made snakes talk to him sometimes while he was tending to Aunt Petunia’s garden.
Tom had always known he was different, special. He had always known that he was meant for the type of greatness that the other children at Wool’s could have never even dreamt of. But still, he had never quite expected the entire fabric of the universe to get torn right before his very eyes.
And he was so sure that it had been torn. Regardless of how absurd it all sounded. After all, he was no stranger to impossible things happening around him, happening because of him.
It all seemed to have happened faster than one could really comprehend – or maybe it was just him passing out that accelerated the passing of time – but when he next opened his eyes, it was clear right away that quite a lot of time had passed. The first sign was the change in his surroundings; the orphanage was nowhere in sight.
Tom had never been to a proper hospital before, but if he had to guess, he would say he was in one right now. He had never before seen so many humming and whirring devices and hadn’t read about anything of the sort either. The infirmary at the orphanage had only contained the bare minimum required, and half of it had been broken anyway. But something still felt off. Like the entire plane of existence remained slightly lopsided, no matter how he turned his head.
As much as Tom prided himself on his intelligence, he couldn’t figure out what had happened. His brain was still foggy, and it didn’t help that the memories he held were too absurd to be properly examined yet. One moment, he had been lamenting his life at the orphanage, and the next, he was in a high-end hospital with too stiff limbs and a nausea-inducing headache. He knew that it was because he was special, because he had the skill that the other children had always been afraid of. “Devil’s spawn” Mrs Cole had liked to call him. It had rubbed off on the others too eventually.
His thoughts were interrupted when the door suddenly opened, revealing a man in his mid-forties wearing a doctor’s getup and a banal smile. On instinct, Tom stiffened, immediately reminded of all the times Mrs Cole had threatened to get him checked-up by a doctor – or a priest, but Tom preferred not to remember too many details of that encounter. He eyed the man warily, not letting himself be fooled by the smile that was only there for the purpose of disarming him.
“Hello. How are you feeling?” the doctor asked while moving a chair next to Tom’s bed and sitting on it.
Still not lowering his guard, Tom only glared at the doctor, trying to get a better grasp of the situation before answering. The doctor only continued to wait patiently – his smile was unfaltering and eyes empty of the usual contempt that most adults reserved for him. After a moment, Tom let his shoulder relax slightly before finally answering, “Fine.” He didn’t feel the need to elaborate. There was nothing else this stranger needed to know. He didn’t need to know that to Tom, the universe was still off-balance. He didn’t need to know and thus, he wouldn’t feel the need to judge, to question.
“I’m glad. You were out for quite a while in the snow. We were worried you wouldn’t make it when you first arrived.”
The doctor’s words gave Tom a pause. He felt his throat lock up when the information registered in his brain, and a shiver of dread ran through him.
The doctor continued, “There’s nothing to worry about anymore. All your vitals are looking good, and you’re recovering quicker than we expected. You’ll be right as rain in no time.”
Tom nodded, too distracted by the fear that was still pooling in his gut to do much else. It worried him that he had lost several hours to lying in the snow, outside and unconscious, and still he didn’t know where he was or how he had ended up there.
“We weren’t able to find any identification on your person,” the doctor interrupted his thoughts, no longer waiting to get a response out of Tom. “Can you tell me your name? We’re trying our best to find your guardians.”
At that, Tom scowled. He didn’t want them to contact the orphanage. He’d rather spend the rest of eternity without understanding his misplacement in the universe than go back there. But there was no dodging the question when the doctor’s eyes bored into Tom’s, and his pen began to scratch something onto a notepad. Only because being cast out onto the streets in the middle of winter sounded even worse than returning to Wool’s, he reluctantly answered, “Tom Riddle.”
The doctor looked at him expectantly; there was an unasked question regarding Tom’s guardians hanging between them. But there was nothing more to say. As far as Tom was concerned, he currently had no guardians – Mrs Cole and her vile band of matrons didn’t count. After several tense seconds, the doctor gave up and nodded, giving him a tight-lipped smile.
“Alright, we can work with that. A nurse will be around soon for a routine check-up. Ring the bell if there’s anything you need.” The doctor pointed to a funny-looking device that was attached to the wall above Tom’s bed. Tom only stared at the doctor blankly, trying not to voice any – and then all – of the endless questions running through his head.
With one last look, the doctor left the room. Tom was finally left alone to try to go over everything that had just transpired. He just hoped that at least something would make sense by the time the nurse showed up.
The doctor returned several hours later. Despite his best efforts, Tom had spent a majority of those hours asleep, barely able to even think with his headache.
The doctor wore a sombre expression when he told Tom they were unable to find any information about him or his guardians and – after many long minutes of prodding – Tom finally admitted to being an orphan. The doctor didn’t seem surprised, but the pitying look in his eyes made Tom’s blood boil. The doctor left with the promise of seeing what can be done regarding Tom’s placement after his recovery. The careful wording caused dread to replace the anger.
The nurse kept coming by every now and then. Every time she would babble insipidly while performing her tasks around the room. Normally Tom would have been more bothered by it, but his shaken mind kept him well distracted. He barely even noticed her.
By lunchtime, he hadn’t figured out anything and was starting to get bored on top of being frustrated. He asked the nurse for something to read. The nurse apologised for not having any children’s books at hand – Tom glared at the assumption that he’d read a children’s book in the first place – and thrust a newspaper into his hands. She went on about bringing something else later once she was finished with the rest of her rounds, but Tom was no longer listening. He sat, completely frozen, and stared at the top corner of the front page while his stomach churned with panic.
The date read “31.12.1988”.
The roads were covered in a thick layer of snow, and Harry’s socks were completely drenched by the time he arrived at school. The holidays were over, and despite not having any friends at school, it was still a reprieve from being stuck at the Dursleys. At school he at least had the chance to disappear from everyone’s radar every once in a while, and the teachers treated him with pleasant indifference.
Dudley had made a fuss in the morning – whining at first and then screaming once Aunt Petunia had refused to let him stay at home – that had delayed Harry’s departure from the house. At least he still managed to arrive on time unlike Dudley. The teachers already had the false conception that he was a delinquent, and he hardly wanted to enforce that, lest they start treating him with the same disdain he was already receiving from the Dursleys.
Harry walked into the classroom where most of his classmates were already seated. The teacher wasn’t present but had clearly already been to the classroom since her bag was resting next to the teacher’s desk. Harry quickly took his seat at the back of the room. Dudley had yet to arrive due to having left the house after Harry and taking his sweet time on the short trip to school to avoid attending class for as long as possible. His friends hadn’t arrived yet either, and at that, Harry let out a sigh of relief. He didn’t want to meet them yet, especially since the teacher wasn’t present and the group had gone the entire holidays without being able to chase Harry down as they usually liked to do.
A few minutes later, the teacher walked back into the room, and after that it didn’t take long for the rest of the pupils to follow. Dudley still wasn’t there and was most likely going to be late, but Harry was sure that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon would find a way to blame either Harry or the school for that.
The teacher – a woman in her mid-thirties with dirty blond hair and a tired expression despite having just returned from the holidays named Miss Welch – began the roll call with a bored drawl. The kids were still restless in their seats, itching to go chat with their friends after not having seen them during the holidays, but remained mostly quiet throughout. Harry answered when his turn came and was about to tune out the rest, when Miss Welch said a new name, one he hadn’t heard before.
“Tom Riddle?” Miss Welch’s eyebrows seemed to scrunch up in confusion until her eyes landed on a boy who sat at the corner of the room. The boy answered, and after a few more seconds, Miss Welch moved on. Harry, however, was intrigued by the new boy – and he wasn’t the only one. Usually they only got new pupils at the beginning of the school year. He couldn’t remember ever having gotten one after the Christmas holidays.
Some of his classmates were also throwing seemingly subtle glances at the new addition to their class. The boy – Tom – stared blankly ahead, blatantly ignoring the curious stares he was receiving. Even when sitting down, Harry could tell Tom was amongst the taller pupils of their class – or maybe it was just his posture. His hair was dark, a similar colour to Harry’s own, and it was neatly coiffed. There was something nagging at the back of Harry’s mind when he looked at Tom. It almost felt like he’d seen him before, but he couldn’t recall when or where. Harry shook the thought off. There was no way they’d met before. He was pretty sure he’d remember.
The roll call finished, but Harry was still observing the new boy. He had no interest in listening the rest of the class share stories of their holidays when he was painstakingly trying to forget his own. It was only when Dudley burst into the room, fifteen minutes late, that his attention was finally diverted, and he reluctantly began to pay attention to that day’s lesson.
When the first break arrived, most of the kids beelined for their friends to continue prattling with each other. Harry tried to stay behind for as long as he could to avoid catching the attention of Dudley’s gang. He’d rather not run into them right on the first day. As he was meticulously putting his books away, he saw Tom get swarmed by their classmates in the hallway. He was visibly annoyed and – quite rudely, in Harry’s opinion – shot down their attempts at introductions.
Harry found himself once again curious about the new pupil. He always was, despite knowing that soon Dudley and his friends would spread lies about him to make sure he never managed to make any proper friends. Each time he still held a sliver of hope that maybe this time would be different, that maybe this time they would still want to talk to him afterwards, but he knew it was ultimately futile.
And yet, he couldn’t help it.
Once Harry could no longer hear the voices of Dudley and his gang from the hallway, he quickly left the classroom, and after putting on his coat, went outside where the rest of the kids were already scattered around. He headed straight for the edge of the schoolgrounds. Harry had spent most of his breaks in the very same corner he was currently headed to. It was half covered by the school building itself and otherwise surrounded by foliage. Dudley had yet to figure out his hiding place with his non-existent brain, even though it had been years now.
The rest of the day passed quickly after that, and Harry successfully avoided Dudley for the entirety of it. He was still curious about the new boy but decided not to push his luck by seeking him out. After all, it hurt less if Harry didn’t know him once Dudley inevitably isolated him again.
All in all, it was a pretty good first day of school.
Harry’s good luck in avoiding Dudley and his friends at school lasted for three whole days, which must have been a new record. They finally cornered him on Friday after the bell rang, and Harry had to exit his hiding place to make it to class in time.
He didn’t make it to class in time.
At least he had only been found towards the end of the break, and since Dudley and his gang couldn’t really afford to be too late either – they were already late on most days and even they could only blame it on whomever they beat up so many times – he got out of it with only minor bruising and a slight reprimand from Miss Welch.
Still, the day was looking bad and turned somehow even worse after they were made to do pair work. No one ever wanted to pair up with Harry, so he was left waiting while everyone else went around the classroom to find their friends. The only other person without a pair by the end of it, was the new boy – Tom. After the first day, it had become clear to everyone that he wasn’t interested in making friends or talking to others at all. There were already whispers that he had scared some of the younger pupils to the brink of tears after they had only tried to introduce themselves. Harry was reminded of Dudley and tried not to frown as he took the seat next Tom.
“Hi, I’m Harry.” The smile on his face felt a bit strained as Tom only stared at him in return. Harry began fiddling with the hem of his shirt.
Tom seemed completely unbothered by the awkward silence and let it drag on for what felt like hours before deigning to reply, “Hello,” and nothing else.
Harry didn’t know how to continue. Having been ostracised form his peers for so long, he had never really learned how to hold a conversation. They stared at each other for a while, until it got too much for Harry and he was forced to say something, anything.
“So…what do you think we should answer to the question about–” Harry began, only to be rudely interrupted.
“We will do nothing. I’ll be doing it alone.” Suddenly, Tom’s stare turned sharp – almost into a glare. There was an unfamiliar accent colouring his speech.
“But we’re supposed to work in pairs–”
“I don’t care.” And with that, Tom turned away from Harry, leaving him thoroughly baffled by the curt exchange.
While Harry was used to others being rude to him, he wasn’t used to giving up so easily. But no matter how he tried to get Tom’s attention, the boy kept ignoring him. Harry started to work on the questions by himself – just like Tom was doing next to him – but when the teacher asked for their answers, Tom fired off all of them at such speed that Harry couldn’t get a single word in. Before he knew it, he was shambling back to his own seat, his mood even more sour than before.
Harry spent the rest of the class glowering at the rude boy.
It had been over a week since Tom had started at the new school. He was slowly getting used to it all, but to his dismay, he found himself having to work harder than the others on subjects like history or geography since a lot of the things taught in them had changed during the fifty years he had ended up somehow skipping. On top of that, the world still didn’t feel real to him on most days.
The other children at school had learned to leave him alone after a few unpleasant encounters with him had made their way into the rumour mill. The couple that had agreed to take him into their house – Mr and Mrs Ingram – weren’t too bothersome either. They mostly left him to his own devices as long as he showed up for dinner every evening and made pointless small talk about school.
The Ingrams owned a two-storey house that was on the smaller side compared to their neighbours’, but they still provided a separate room for Tom. It was at least twice the size of his old room back at the orphanage. Tom had yet to figure out, why exactly had the Ingrams decided to take him in. They didn’t seem too keen on the idea of having children and were more than happy that Tom was as independent as he was. From snooping through the house and eavesdropping on their conversations with the neighbours, he had come to the conclusion that it must have had something to do with polishing their own image. The discovery didn’t make him nearly as irritated as he would have expected it to. After all, the quality of his living conditions had essentially multiplied overnight without any real drawbacks.
It was pleasant enough.
Despite the other children knowing not to bother him, the teachers hadn’t really caught up to what was happening yet. They seemed confused about why no one would spend time with him when – in their eyes – he was so sweet and thoughtful. Having learned from his mistakes with Mrs Cole, he was being more careful around them. It was like a second chance; he wasn’t going to mess it up again.
Tom was quickly making his way back to the top of the class even with the abundance of new information. Not that it was very hard. Most of the pupils taught by Miss Welch were truly obtuse. The dimmest of them all being Dudley Dursley and his insufferable gang of miscreants. And yet, they were the ones marching around the school like they owned the place. It made no sense.
On Tom’s first day, the group of boys had approached him. They were clearly trying to gauge what value Tom could be to them, or if they needed to intimidate him into submission. Tom had no interest in petty schoolyard squabbles and proceeded to make it clear that he was to be left alone. While idiots, the group still knew not to push further for now, but Tom knew they’d still be coming back, probably with the intention of humiliating him for not bending to their will. He would like to see them try.
Today however, the gang seemed too busy chasing down a scrawny boy, who was wearing a frayed and loose piece of fabric that vaguely resembled their school uniform, to pay him any mind. Tom distantly recalled having talked to the running boy once but couldn’t recall his name – not that he tried very hard.
The boy was fast. He had been running for several minutes already, successfully avoiding the five boys chasing him. It was only when his too long trouser leg fell from where it was rolled up and got stuck under his shoe that the others finally caught up to him. What followed, was the smaller boy getting hit until a teacher appeared from behind a corner, and the group scattered – moving now way faster than they had when chasing the boy. The boy got up from the ground as if nothing had happened, despite Dudley and his gang not having gone easy on him by the looks of it. The teacher didn’t even glance at the boy.
Tom looked at the scene with distaste. The scrawny boy was weak for not fighting back, while Dudley and his gang were pathetic and immature for going five against one, and to top it all off, the teacher was just as useless as all the other adults in Tom’s life had ever been. Disinterested once again, Tom returned his attention to the book he had been previously reading.
Around lunchtime, the other children fled the classroom as soon as the chance to take a break from studying presented itself. Tom stayed behind under the pretence of arranging his books. When he was completely alone, he approached the backpack of someone who sat two seats in front of him. He had been eyeing a shiny enamel pin-back button attached to it for a couple of days now, and finally, he had been left alone with it.
Or so he had thought.
As soon as he had detached the pin-back, the door to the classroom was pushed ajar. The same boy who he had seen get chased around earlier entered the room, holding and icepack to his face. He paused as he saw Tom crouched down next to someone else’s table.
“What are you doing here?” the boy asked, looking suspicious.
“I could ask you the same.” Obviously Tom knew that the boy had just been let out from the infirmary, but he wasn’t about to give that away. Besides, he’d send the boy straight back there if he had to.
“I was at the infirmary. I wasn’t sure where the other pupils were so– Is that Leah’s pin-back?” The boy’s eyes snapped to Tom’s hand that had just slipped the pin-back into his pocket.
“No.”
“Where is her pin-back then?”
“How would I know? Maybe it fell off.” Tom was getting annoyed. The boy wasn’t even close to the other pupils, there was no reason for him to care about what happened to their possessions.
“Right. And you just happen to have a similar one in your pocket.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The boy – whom Tom had deemed weak earlier that day – was now glaring daggers at him with such intensity that Tom was almost taken aback by it.
“I saw you put it in your pocket!” the boy nearly shouted, his voice getting louder. Tom really couldn’t afford for anyone else to interfere.
“Fine! I took it. What’s it to you?” Tom bit back. Arguing here was pointless. Tom didn’t want to miss lunch, but at this rate, he was going to.
“You can’t just take other people’s stuff!” The boy looked so sincere as he spoke that it made Tom almost let out a laugh.
“Of course you can if they don’t take good enough care of them. It would’ve likely fallen off soon anyway, so I’m just doing her a favour, really, by keeping it safe.”
“You’re stealing, it’s wrong!”
“And what’re you going to do about it? I know you don’t tattle. Otherwise, you would’ve said something when those boys chased you down today, yet they’re prancing around, scot-free.” He watched in mild amusement as the boy’s face was overtaken by a furious flush. The boy must have been biting his cheek to stop himself from shouting.
Then, he seemed to finally give in to that temptation. “You’re no better than them!” the boy shouted and stormed out of the room, leaving Tom alone and baffled by his sudden departure.
He recovered quickly. Despite the confrontation, he had gotten the pin-back, and the boy had done as good as confirmed that no one else would find out. He lifted the small round object out of his pocket to observe it better and felt a deep satisfaction settle into his chest. The pin-back had a painted picture of a tropical island with the text “Tenerife” written across it. The needle at the back was sharp when Tom went to remove the back-piece. Content with his prize, he put it back into his pocket and finally left for lunch.
Harry was fuming. For the past two days, Tom had been marching around school like nothing was amiss, while Leah bawled her eyes out over the “lost” souvenir, and Harry could do nothing but watch. Tom had been right; he wouldn’t tattle. After all, there was no one who would have believed him even if he did. And besides, Dudley would have probably just found a way to spin the blame on him in such case.
At least Harry could take comfort in the fact that Tom was the one person Dudley could never drive away from him – he had done it all by himself, acting with the same kind of arrogance as Dudley did. Harry was so preoccupied by his frustration that he completely failed to notice Dudley and his gang creeping up on him that afternoon as was making his way home.
“Hey! What’s he doing here?” rang the loud voice of Piers Polkiss, making Harry swivel around. As usual, he had been avoiding the group of boys as much as he could, but once again, they’d found him when he’d least expected it. Dudley was in a particularly foul mood today. He had been reprimanded by Miss Welch for trying to copy off of his friends, and no amount of weepy lies had managed to sway her to his side.
The others must have answered something, but Harry was already sprinting as fast as he could. He was still near the school, and instead of heading home where no one would bat an eye if he were beat up by Dudley, he turned back towards the schoolgrounds where he had several perfect hiding spots. Regrettably, Dudley’s bad mood also meant that he was unusually persistent in his attempts to catch Harry in hopes of taking his anger out on him with a couple of punches.
And so, Harry found himself cornered by the five bigger boys in a dead-end behind the school.
But Dudley wasn’t the only one with a temper that day.
After the first hit landed, Harry had had enough. All of his anger and frustration finally boiled over, as the second fist approached his face. Out of nowhere, the five boys towering over Harry were violently knocked back, as if by a peculiarly strong gust of wind.
Not wasting a second, Harry fled as soon as he realised that the others were laying sprawled across the ground. He would have enough time to hide before they managed to gather their bearings.
When the Dursleys that evening received a letter regarding Dudley’s attempted cheating at school, Dudley chose that particular moment to burst into fake tears and show an imaginary bruise that he had received from falling to the ground, after Harry had – according to Dudley – “out of nowhere” and in a “fit of rage” pushed him to the ground. Not that the distraction was needed in the first place, as Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon already believed every word coming out of their son’s mouth over the teacher’s. It earned Harry an early retirement into the cupboard.
Still, Harry couldn’t help but be grateful for whatever had saved him from getting a second black eye that week.
Tom had been loitering around in the school library after classes the afternoon it happened. He had taken to browsing the shelfs whenever he had the chance, trying to acclimatise himself the best he could with his new environment. While the Ingrams never came home before evening – meaning he’d have plenty of time to be alone in the house – they also lacked a proper collection of books that would have been of interest to him. The school library was almost always empty outside of school hours, and the librarian didn’t seem to mind him sticking around either. Despite all the catching up he had to do with some of the subjects, he was still able to make time for leisurely reading as well. He had just checked out a pile of books regarding various topics, when he happened to stumble across the scene.
At first, he paid it no mind, as Dudley and his gang were just at their favourite pastime – terrorising those weaker than themselves – but something about the boy they had managed to corner made him stick around to watch.
It was the same boy who had seen him with the pin-back a few days ago. Despite being thoroughly surrounded with no way out, his eyes were alit with an inextinguishable fire, and even after the first hit, he kept his chin raised in defiance.
And then the second hit never came.
In its stead, the five bullies were flung back by an invisible force, leaving the scrawny boy mostly unharmed and with a clear escape route that the boy took the second he saw it. He ran so fast he didn’t even seem to notice Tom, who stood behind the corner with an expression of open shock on his face. Shock, that was caused by recognition. Because Tom knew that invisible force. It was the same he himself had used plenty of times in situations not unlike this one.
The universe seemed to suddenly snap back into place. Tom no longer felt adrift between time and space, and the world was once again properly solid beneath his feet.
And that’s when Tom knew he had made a miscalculation.
He knew that he had to learn everything about that scrawny boy with the odd-shaped scar and too bright eyes and an annoying sense of righteousness.
He just had to.