The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part Two

January 17, 1938

Tom was waiting this time, sitting in the window of the parlor, watching the street outside for the man who had promised to return after the visit with Albus Dumbledore. He contained his excitement none the less, staying still and watching patiently as the man cut cross the intersection and stepped into the hall, once again claiming a meeting with Mrs. Cole. Tom listened as the man spoke in a low voice, and Mrs. Cole left the room, calling for Missy and the other children to follow her.

After distracting Mrs. Cole and Missy, the man came in and sat down in the parlor with Tom, sipping a cup of tea that he had made appear from no where. Tom now stared in awe of the man for he was fascinated by the magic that he had been so recently introduced to.

"You don't remember me, do you, Tom?" Grindelwald asked. "I mean from when you were small, of course, not our meeting just last month."

"No sir," Tom replied. "We've met before?"

"I knew your mother," Grindelwald said, "Before the mess with your father took place, of course, and heard about the rather upsetting news she had married a -- a non-wizard, shall we say."

"My mother?" Tom asked. He made a face. "My mother is dead."

"Yes, Tom, she is," Grindelwald said, "And she left you in an orphanage for normal people, rather than using her dying moments to see you properly placed - as you ought to have been with wizards. But she wanted you to be normal, you see, or unmagical, rather than extraordinary, as you've got it in yoj to be. Well that's why she came here when there were many other places she could have gone. She fancied giving up magic, Tom."

"Why would anyone give up magic... if they have the choice?"

"Because she was not well in the mind, Tom. Which is what Mrs. Cole knew about her, without knowing of the magic that your mother wished to shed." Grindelwald sipped his tea. "Mrs. Cole fancied you to be abnormal as well because that is what filthy no-magic muggle-born humans - normal people - do when they do not understand someone else. They try to destroy everything that is special and different about them. Do you understand, Tom?"

"Why?"

"Because they are cruel and they do not enjoy being told that things can be different than how they believe things ought to be." Grindelwald said sharply. "They do not think of the Greater Good, only of the Good for Themselves." Grindelwald looked at Tom's cup. "Do you not like your tea? You've barely drank a drop."

"I don't care much for tea, sir."

Grindelwald made a face, then waved his wand and the tea was gone from Tom's cup, replaced by a fizzing gold liquid. "There. Give that a go, you'll prefer it, I think. It's butterbeer. A wizard boy's greatest treat."

Tom sipped and found it was very sweet and he did like it and he marvelled, eyes staring at Grindelwald's wand. "Shall I one day have a wand like yours, sir?"

Grindelwald looked at his wand, then back to the boy. "No one has a wand like mine. It is of its very own sort. But you shall have one, soon, I expect, and it will be your very own and you shall learn to control it, and it shall learn to be controlled by you."

"Can I do magic now, without --"

"You do not remember me, Tom," Grindelwald cut him off, "because I last saw you at a very difficult time in your life. You most likely remember very little of that time, because of the things that the doctors did to you. It was six years ago now, you were only five, and they were attempting to alter your mind. They used a very cruel, very crude muggle procedure, since they were muggle doctors that did not know about the magical properties of your conditon. They believed it was a muggle disease called schizophrenia. But what you had, Tom, was actually an obscurial."