Harry Potter : Chapter 61: On The Prowl III

The night was mostly quiet and without wind: the smoke from the factories coupled with the persistent smog of the cars clogged the air despite the rain of the previous afternoon, and Tom Riddle hated London a bit more just for that.

The air at Hogwarts carried with it the cool resilience of the stone walls, the faint smoke of burning wood, the multitude of simmering potions, and the infinite rustle of the Forbidden Forest singing in tune with the faint waves of the Black Lake.

The Slytherin wizard was sprawled on the uncomfortable mattress of the room that he managed to coerce Mrs.

Cole into leaving aside only for him, his yew wand cradled in his fingers and his dark eyes peering through half-lidded eyes at the dingy wallpaper and the slightly rusted hinges of the only window that allowed him to spot the full moon barely hidden by the occasional stretch of clouds.

Once more, he had been forced by circumstance into returning to the Orphanage: once more, he had been cut from his true home, from his birthright.

For another summer, he'd be more or less held hostage among the filthy muggles, risking his life merely by living in London: for eight months the Luftwaffe had dropped bombs on strategic cities across Britain.

Oh, Riddle had been at Hogwarts between the 7th of September and the days of May during which the Blitz was conducted, but when he returned, he had seen the devastation and had seen the fear in the minds of those who surrounded him.

The entirely reasonable fear of disappearing in a ball of fire during the night, with warnings that weren't enough to protect the abandoned orphans at Wool's. And he had felt that very same fear.

...

He learned fast, magic was his way out of the pale and meaningless world of the muggles, and he was rightly bright at it: wasn't he the Heir of Slytherin? But he couldn't have defended himself at the time: not if the building he was in was destroyed in a split second while he was still asleep.

Not that sleep could ever reach him in a world that wasn't his: each summer, he had been forced back into his personal slice of hell, remaining awake every night in fear that he'd open his eyes only to lose them to fire and shrapnel.

There wasn't a comfortable bed in the safety of the dungeons beneath the Black Lake, there was no vast amount of food available three times a day, and worst of all, there wasn't magic. 

Tom learned to steal naps during the day every time he could, and he had slowly managed to push his way into Mrs. Cole's 'out of sight, out of mind'-mindset: to the point that he was exonerated from the duties that the other orphans had to complete.

To the point that everyone was grateful, if a bit envious in the case of the more stupid children, to have him keep to himself to his room.

He could only read those tomes he managed to take from his true home, and wait, counting the months and weeks and days and hours and minutes until he'd finally be able to return to his rightful place.

The bombings had apparently stopped, but who was to say that it wasn't a simple strategy to have everyone lower their guard until it was too late? Well, Tom wouldn't fall for it, he couldn't. He'd live forever, and that meant not sleeping while in the muggle world.

How absurd it was that Hagrid already knew how to Apparate: how insane it was that he apparently did so on the regular and hadn't been spotted by the Ministry.

Oh, Tom hadn't wasted time in having the theory explained to him: but the intolerable part was that the theory was limited to 'willing it' along with some absolutely inconceivable motto that the fools at school truly believed in. Destination, Deliberation, Determination? How ridiculous, how laughable.

But the only thing worse than being unable to Apparate with Hagrid's ease because of his disregard for the Ministry's method, would be to succeed in escaping the muggle world only to splint himself and scatter his pieces across the land.

Tom couldn't die, and so he couldn't attempt Apparition on his own, too risky, to dangerous. Too unacceptable because it meant simply following the word of Hagrid even above Minerva's description of the classes.

So Tom waited in his bed, his eyes half-lidded as he resorted to Occlumency to keep himself from fidgeting: he'd wait. Soon enough, he'd travel to the continent, in some crazy adventure that nonetheless allowed him his much sought-after freedom.

For the first time in his life, he wouldn't be constrained to the muggle world, and he was sure that Minerva could teach how to Apparate properly: for that sole reason, he'd have agreed to reach Australia.

Greece was a surprisingly tame destination, and the possibility of hunting a chimaera, as Hagrid had not so subtly hinted at, roused his interest. After all, he was hardly challenged at school, and he could hardly make use of the many spells that had laid forgotten in the Restricted Section or in the Chamber of Secrets until he rediscovered them.

So Tom waited, the many sounds of a half-asleep London trickling through the opened window and pushing against the odd noises that everyone had to grow familiar with in an orphanage.

He waited, and under the reinforced calm of his Occlumency, he could only feel eagerness. Soon, he could leave behind the orphanage, and the witless, meaningless muggles that surrounded him. Soon he would no longer need to forcefully hold back sleep to avoid nightmares of...

With the crackling of fire, a fiery flash appeared in the center of Tom's small room, immediately followed by a dull *thud* against the floor, and the oddest echo of a song he couldn't place ringing in the Slytherin's ears.

Tom was already on his feet with his wand raised above him to cast the most powerful shield he could conjure, his heart hammering in his chest as he felt the fears of years bubbling to the surface despite his Occlumency: only for it all to freeze when his extraordinary brain parsed the information that his eyes conveyed.

In a growing pool of blood on his floor, there was a face-down Hagrid, his shirt ripped to tatters as two thin cuts across his back ended with a chunk of flesh outright missing.

The red liquid immediately filled the room with its coppery tang while it shone wetly under the light of the moon.

Despite himself, Riddle found himself kneeling at the side of the unnaturally sized wizard, ignoring the blood that almost splashed against his bare knees while he whispered harshly, as it wouldn't do to awaken the muggles only for them to find the unexplainable presence of Rubeus in his room in the middle of the night:

"Hagrid! Are you awake?"

The dark eyes of the younger wizard opened a fraction despite the pained grimace on his face, and with a voice that was less than the barest whisper, he spoke: "S-s-satchel."

Forcing himself to hold back the questions while his mind put together the context with the word used by the heavily wounded Slytherin student, Tom quickly grabbed the satchel that hung on Rubeus' waist, opening it and immediately grabbing the vials labeled 'Essence of Dittany'.

Thanking the moonlight in the privacy of his mind, Riddle immediately poured a generous dose of the contents of the greatest wound first, who went as stiff as a plank of wood when the liquid sizzled and forcefully stopped the bleeding.

As he proceeded to repeat the action over the parallel cuts that went from Hagrid's left shoulder to just over the middle of his back, he noticed that Rubeus was already shaking his head. Once more in what amounted to less than a whisper, the younger wizard spoke.

"S-silver potion," then, drawing strength from the slightly waning pain from the missing chunk of flesh on his right side, he spoke a bit more clearly, "after that, blood replenishing."

Tom set to follow his instructions without questioning him, as he clearly wasn't in a position to explain himself at the moment, and at the same time, he already began thinking of a way to smuggle the insanely huge wizard out of the orphanage before the dawn came, along with the difficulties implicit in cleaning the blood from the old floor and his own clothes.

"Of course, you wouldn't bother with labeling your experimental brews even when they turn out to be extremely important." Riddle huffed as he kept a few vials he fished from the small satchel under the moonlight until he recognized the needed ones.

While he worked and managed to make the wounds on Rubeus' back stop bleeding, he handed him the blood-replenishing potion, which had no doubt been heavily modified to be insanely more effective than anything ever seen before.

With halting movements, the much bigger wizard uncorked the vial and downed the entirety of its contents, only to rest his head once more on the floor, his eyes closing tiredly as he waited for all of his potions to take effect.

Now that his sudden bout of fear had had time to abate, and the absurdity of the current situation no longer occupied the entirety of his cognitive functions, Riddle began to grow aggravated with Hagrid: it wasn't enough that he'd annoy him by spotting his minimal influence over certain idiots at school, oh no, he had to bother him even during the summer.

At least the Ministry had apparently neglected to spot the humungous, underage, wounded wizard appearing in a literal ball of fire in a muggle orphanage.

Still, Riddle had apparently just saved Hagrid's life, which meant that he owed him, and he owed him a lot. Thinking about what he had recently discovered about the unnaturally tall Slytherin student, Tom poked at the wound in Rubeus' side forcing him to jolt on the floor with a hiss. "Awaken, you big lump! You cannot stay on the floor of a muggle orphanage! And how did you manage to find me?"

Hagrid blinked slowly as he breathed through gritted teeth. Slowly, he managed to turn on one side, and then on his back, even if that meant that his shoulder pressed uncomfortably against one wall of the now cramped room.

"Tom? What are you doing here?"

"I live here." Riddle wasn't going to let the other play him for a fool, "You, on the other hand, almost broke the Statute of Secrecy, completely shredded the Reasonable Restriction over the use of magic for underage wizards, and woke me by appearing half-dead in my room in a ball of fire, and..."

Hagrid rose a hand to stop the extremely pointed tirade of the older student, his eyes closed while brow furrowed and he undoubtedly went over the events that had caused his appearance, surely censuring them as much as he could before giving an answer.

"Long story," he rasped out, "thanks for the help."

Riddle fought the sudden urge of smacking the much bigger boy: "You're not going to get away with it with a 'Long Story', Hagrid." he observed pointedly, "I want answers."

The other simply rolled his eyes, slowly shifting his weight to his arms as he managed to put himself on a seated position: "No, I'm serious, I'll tell you, but not tonight... am I in London?"

"Of course, you imbecile."

Rubeus took a deep breath, apparently checking himself under the moonlight while his fingers grasped his wand once more and half-heartedly attempted to clean it from the dried blood.

"I'll take the Knight Bus and spend the night in Diagon Alley, until I recover enough to apparate."

"And my explanation?" Riddle asked sardonically while he ripped the bedsheet that covered his mattress and used it to roughly clean his knees from the other wizard's blood, "Nevermind, I'll get it soon enough: I just saved your life, didn't I?"

Rubeus took another, tired deep breath: "Let's skip this part. What do you want?"

"Take me away from London."

"What?" Rubeus straightened his back while he manually put away the empty vials and his wand.

Tom sat on his bed and threw the dirty bedsheet at Rubeus only to hunch forward, his elbows resting on his knees: "You heard me."

"Well, the trip to Greece isn't scheduled for a while yet..."

"Oh, no, I didn't mean only for this summer, I meant away from the orphanage, period." Riddle grinned, and it was a joyless thing, but something that screamed of triumph nevertheless, "As you undoubtedly understood."

The grimace on Hagrid's face seemed to seep down into his very soul, and that alone was almost worth the fright and the disturbance that the other Slytherin had brought into Tom's life.

Then he chuckled, seeming genuinely amused: "You know, normal people at least pretend to care about the saving part, instead of the reward. Hell, some of them only help because they can!"

"You must know normal people that I don't then." Riddle replied blandly.

"How cinic."

The two waited for a few seconds during which the silence stretched awkwardly, at least on one side, until Rubeus finally nodded: "It'll take me a few days to organize things."

Tom remembered that he still had the Black King after the last piece of magic he displayed in the Rùnda, but he knew that if that wasn't the case, he would have earned it that night.

Now, they only had to figure out a way to smuggle the unnaturally tall Slytherin student out of Wool's, and a manner to clean the blood on the floor before any muggle spotted it.

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