Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Tom was back at Wool's. ㅤ
The tall run-down building seemed to taunt him, making him regret coming back. It'll only be for a night, Tom consoled himself, hoping that he wouldn't have to come back to his small room after tomorrow.
"Mrs Cole," Tom spoke aloud in an attempt to wake the sleeping woman.
The matron woke up with a groan, a trail of saliva glistening on the side of her lips as she looked up at Tom. "Oh you're here?" she asked, clearly intoxicated with the evidence, an almost empty gin bottle, in hand. "Why are you back boy?"
"Perhaps this is the only day I'll be staying, I will be leaving tomorrow," he announced monotonously, not giving the older woman a chance to reply—she was slurring over her words and nodding off back to sleep anyways.
On his way upstairs to his room, Tom comes across Billy Stubbs. When the latter looked up and saw him, colour immediately flushed out of the boy's face and ran back the way he came. Tom smirked, satisfied with his presence to the other kids residing there.
After arriving at his room, he opened his case to retrieve a small handful of items. First was the black coat that Ivory gave him, he planned on wearing that tomorrow. Second was the small chest containing his precious trophies, and trinkets he won.
The first item he ever got from Hogwarts was the gold gobstone marble he stole after winning the game in his first year. Another item was a handkerchief, charmed to be eternally spotless, from a Gryffindor girl in his second year. The last one was an intricately carved silver pocket watch from a housemate whom he quarrelled with. Without the watch, the boy inevitably came to every class late, which made Tom smirk in satisfaction at the thought. The other trinkets clunked as he blacked the box next to his old tin one which contained his older trophies.
The sight of it made him remember his introduction to Dumbledore.
It was August of 1938, a month before school started. Mrs. Cole introduced the older man to him as two separate names, before Dumbledore himself corrected the matron. Tom first thought of the bearded man as a doctor, who was sent by the alcoholic woman to cure him, or perhaps he was there to send him into a place for crazy people.
But Dumbledore explained that it was none of that. Dumbledore introduced him to magic. In all of Tom's childhood, he has been able to do things no other child there could do, so naturally, he thought he was special.
And oh how he was special indeed.
Tom spent the rest of his day cooped up in his room reading, and in no time, dinner came. Mrs Cole's voice echoed through the narrow hallways announcing food and hurried footsteps from children trampled across the dusty old wooden floor. Tom didn't bother for dinner, he lost his appetite just thinking about the stale old bread and bland soggy vegetables. They were lucky if any meat was served for protein, even if it was offal or giblets.
