The thirtieth of December saw me accompanying Castle Albus to St. Mungo’s.
“Percival Dumbledore, educated at the Mexico Magical Lyceum,” Castle Albus informed me. “I have documents testifying to that from the Mexican Ministry of Magic as well as from our own Ministry.”
“Cousins?” I questioned.
“Cousins on the paternal side,” he elaborated. “I will leave a copy of the documents with you tonight.”
“Aberforth?” I asked. My brother’s plight had been weighing the most on my mind.
“The hearing is on the seventh of January,” Castle Albus said. “He will be released that evening.”
The hearing, then, would only be a formality. It would also serve as testimony in the future highlighting how Albus Dumbledore, being the long-suffering, gentle older brother he was, had selflessly strived to save the ungrateful, uncouth, semiliterate Aberforth’s hide from Azkaban.
There were festive decorations in the corridors. The Healers were bustling about from sickroom to sickroom carrying bundles of gifts. An azure little package sat cosy upon each of those gift-bundles. It bore a familiar heraldry.
“Hyperion Malfoy,” Castle Albus muttered. “He has arranged to have the Healers continue his wife’s tradition of distributing gifts on New Year’s Eve to the long-term patients here. Why he bothers, I haven’t an idea, given that he has never turned up to see what the Healers buy for the patients each year or how much the actual expenses are. He has a secretary to deal with the finances.”
“Politics,” I said. Here Castle Albus and I were on common ground. Both of us held the Malfoys in disdain.
“Yes,” my companion agreed. “However, he has been staying clear of power circles after his crony Phineas Nigellus passed away.”
They had been a dangerous duo: Malfoy with his canny political dealings and Phineas Black with his considerable clout as the Headmaster of Hogwarts. In 1925, Phineas Black had passed away. Before Malfoy could recoup, there had been his wife’s death in childbirth in 1926. He had then abandoned his political games in London and taken his newborn heir with him to Wiltshire. Rumours were that the young Malfoy scion was being thoroughly indoctrinated in the Dark Arts by wizards brought in from Albania and Germany.
“I heard from Bode that your boy has been getting on well with the Jack-in-the-Ministry Malfoy,” Castle Albus said blandly, watching me through the corner of his eyes in a bid to measure my reaction.
With the fear of Grindelwald rampant in the Ministry, there was no department or secret safe from Albus Dumbledore’s prying. The Ministry was putty in his hands because they believed that only he had power enough to head and win a war against Grindelwald.
“What was Malfoy doing there?” I asked, trying to avoid a direct answer.
“Information-gathering,” Castle Albus said flatly. “It is his speciality, after all. One wonders for whom.”
There had been unsubstantiated accusations thrown by Aloysius Moody regarding Malfoy’s involvement in Grindelwald’s operations on our island. I suppressed a pang of worry. Had Malfoy come to investigate Tom Riddle at Grindelwald’s behest? Had that been why Malfoy had deigned to act the part of a messenger? What was the game? A man in Lilliput. Had Tom been implying that Castle Albus was not the only Lilliputian with an ulterior motive?
“Isn’t entry and information on a need to know basis at the Department of Mysteries?”
“It is,” Castle Albus admitted. “However, these unsettled times often call for overriding of the hierarchy by a privileged few who have the power to make things happen. Malfoy is one of them, because of his clout in the pure-blood circles.”
That Albus Dumbledore also was one of those privileged few civilians who had access to classified Ministry resources went unsaid. Power was seductive, and in 1934, with the Ministry falling over itself to aid the wizarding world’s golden icon of hope, Albus Dumbledore had been at his most powerful. Seeing his influence in the Ministry, despite my best efforts, envy and longing still clamoured in my heart. I had no influence now. No informants or loyalists. It was an unusual position for me to be in. From the very beginning of my schooldays, I had built circles of loyal friends, trustworthy acquaintances and useful neutralists who would prove to be the lynchpins of my activities in the later years. Deprived of these now, I felt unusually vulnerable.
Castle Albus knocked on a door perfunctorily and then entered the sickroom. An old woman was seated beside the bed on which Ollivander lay prone. I could not help averting my eyes from the distorted features of the wand-maker. Little wonder why everyone was convinced that the boy was a budding psychopath. Only magic with the intent to harm could have caused this desecration.
The woman’s earrings seemed to be shaped from something that resembled pumpkin rinds. She wore a set of cream robes that emitted a substance not unlike pixie dust at regular intervals. Feeling queasy, I returned my gaze to Ollivander.
Wild blue eyes that were the only recognisable aspects which remained on that ravaged face now looked at us suspiciously.
“I will not voluntarily ask that the charges be dropped against that devil, Albus!” Ollivander spat and I cringed at the pain which rang muted in his hoarse, low tones.
“As I said, I looked into his mind and saw only confusion and fear,” Castle Albus said with the right mix of apology, concern and benevolence in his voice. How often had I cajoled men and women with that exact voice? These insights were not welcome. I wilfully locked down this thread of thought for later, and returned to the present. Castle Albus was trying to coax Ollivander into compliance with well-spun arguments.
“Can you bring him here?” the woman interjected and Castle Albus looked displeased by her interruption.
However, he restored his polite facade and asked, “Why would you wish to see him, Mrs. Lovegood?”
Luna Lovegood’s great-grandmother was a woman every inch as strange as Luna herself. It certainly ran in their family.
“So that he can apologise to Mr. Ollivander, of course,” she said.
Castle Albus looked incredulous and rightly so. He had seen what lurked in the boy’s mind and certainly laboured under no illusions about Tom’s nature. Aberforth, less skilled in both perception and Legilimency, continued to harbour hopes of reforming Tom.
However, if the boy came in and made a sincere apology, it would greatly aid my cause to retrieve him from the Ministry’s clutches. I weighed the risks. Tom could feign sincerity better than most. Perhaps it would sway the Lovegood woman and that might prove a factor in convincing Ollivander to drop the charges.
Castle Albus seemed to be thinking along the same lines, for he said, “It shall be as you wish, Mrs. Lovegood. Percival, perhaps you could wait here while I see to this errand?”
“Certainly,” I said graciously, relieved that I would not have to win a debate to persuade him about the course of action.
“Hallucinda,” Ollivander muttered, as soon as the door closed behind Castle Albus, “a moment alone with him, if you please?”
Hallucinda Lovegood fixed me with an inscrutable look before nodding to Ollivander and leaving the room. I swallowed down my unease at seeing the wand-maker’s features and occupied the chair Mrs. Lovegood had been seated upon.
“We are the closest of friends, Albus and I,” Ollivander said quietly. “In your time, it was not so. What changed?”
The Elder Wand. Ollivander had been spurred by intellectual curiosity and had asked me to allow him the opportunity to study the wand. The hold of the wand over me ensured that I had turned him down bluntly. The rumours of the Deathstick had come between us and Ollivander wanted me to do away with the wand. It corroded our relationship, softly and steadily, until all our interactions were confined to letters. Over the years, the letters became more distant and less frequent. I would occasionally write to him enquiring about a student’s wand and what it indicated. We had little reason to run into each other, given that he had been a recluse all his life excepting the period when we had been inseparable friends.
Ollivander was staring at me. I answered him as best as I could, under the circumstances. “There is a time to build and a time to break down.”
Ollivander frowned. I was amused. One would have thought that someone as the wand-maker would be proficient in the art of abstraction given that his craft required a high degree of the same. Frustration replaced my amusement. The lonely man in Lilliput, understood by none and weary of explaining himself.
No. I had company in Lilliput now. Tom could place the reference to the Old Testament I had made. There was the not insignificant matter of how unsuited Tom was for the part of the misunderstood orphan genius. I frowned. Perhaps there was something to be said in favour of Cornelius Fudge’s brand of wilful ignorance. If only I could pretend that I had not seen the darkness in the boy!
“You can’t save him,” Ollivander spat. “He is mad, or half-way there. I saw him look at me then, you know. He is mad, Albus.”
“Percival,” I interjected.
“So dark,” the wand-maker murmured. “So powerful.”
There was a knock on the door. Relieved, I hurried to open the door.
“Sir!”
Unguarded dark eyes, circled by soft bruises born of sleepless nights and worrying, and wide in shock, flicked over my features in surprise. My hand came of its own accord to ruffle the boy’s dirty, matted hair. Instead of bearing it with quiet disapproval as he usually did, Tom’s breathing hitched and his head inclined towards me seeking the caress. Worry and anger and helplessness flooded my mind. The boy’s natural shields were cracked and did nothing to stem his turbulent emotions. That, more than anything else, made me pull the boy to me. The sickly-sweet scent of his unwashed pre-pubescent body offended my nostrils but when he exhaled in relief into my robes for a moment before rapidly moving away in mortification, I tightened my grasp.
Strange. Despite my reputation as a charmer, I despised bodily contact for the most part. It was one of the reasons why Aberforth had made a better carer for Ariana. I would tolerate perfunctory kisses on the cheek and social tokens like embracing with grace but I rarely ever initiated them unless customs absolutely called for such an act. Perhaps that was why I had taken to Fawkes well. He did not require much in the way of bodily contact unlike Kneazles or Puffskeins. Now, as I stood in the doorway of Ollivander’s sickroom at St. Mungo’s, holding the boy as close to me as if he was the original manuscript of Argo Pyrites’s Alchemy, Ancient Art and Science, I wondered what had changed.
“Just a shade of Legilimency,” Castle Albus told me as he passed us to enter the sickroom. “He will be all right after a good night’s sleep.”
I hastily raised my shields as Tom’s anger flared. His hands fisted in my robes. I was grateful and surprised that no spontaneous outbursts of his magic ensued. Was he so weary? He took a deep breath and ducked out of my embrace.
Dear me, the apology. How would Tom react to the sight of Ollivander? He had seen more than most eight-year-olds, but he was still an eight-year-old. However, there was nothing I could do to spare him this. He had caused it, after all.
I cleared my throat and said in a tone that brooked no opposition, “Well, we had best get it over with, Tom. Mr. Ollivander is inside. You will tell him how sorry you are for causing him harm.”
Tom looked slightly perturbed by my sudden sternness but he nodded and followed me into the room. I played with my beard in frustration. This situation was intolerable. It would be better for all involved once Aberforth returned and enforced his own brand of quasi-parenting on Tom.
A sharp intake of breath broke my musings. Tom was standing stock-still as he took in the destruction his wild magic had caused.
“So what have you to say for yourself?” Ollivander barked, clearly unsettled by Tom’s staring.
Tom’s fingers twitched as he let his hands fall to his sides. In a quiet, clear tone, he began, “Mr. Ollivander, I had never seen a bird as the one you brought that day. I was shocked when it appeared out of thin air. You came right after the bird and set Hero-” he swallowed involuntarily and immediately looked quite peeved by his loss of composure. With effort, he gathered himself and continued, “You set the snake on fire. I was frightened.” The thinning of his lips showed what it had cost him to say that last word. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I lost control.” Now his fingers were near bloodless and his knuckles white as he clasped his hands together. “I thought-” He made a jerky motion with his hands before clasping them again “I thought that the bird would have cured you too, because it cured me and my burns didn’t hurt anymore; my skin became as if the burns hadn’t happened at all.”
True. Fawkes had healed Tom after the boy had stuck his hands in the fire to grab the burning snake’s thrashing body. Why hadn’t Fawkes healed Ollivander? When Castle Albus said that Fawkes had been persuaded to bring them to our safe-haven, what method of persuasion had been used? Whatever it had been, Fawkes must have been extremely angry by his treatment for it was nigh unthinkable that he would let anyone suffer so when he had the power to heal.
“It is the bird’s fault that I am in this state, you say,” Ollivander sneered. I fluctuated between sympathy and anger. Castle Albus was watching Tom through narrowed eyes.
Emotion clouded the boy’s face as he said, “It was not the bird’s fault, sir.”
“Then you see that it was your fault?” Castle Albus questioned. His voice was cool and non-judgemental, but I could see his suspicions and prejudices because they were mine too. “Own up to your actions, Mr. Riddle. Magic is a gift. You have misused it in a terrible manner. The least you can do now is to own up to your reprehensible actions and apologise to your victim. Perhaps then we might see about lessening your punishment. What you have done can earn you a sentence in Azkaban and only Mr. Ollivander’s grace stands in between.”
Tom straightened himself and met Castle Albus’s gaze calmly. He said, “Mr. Malfoy said that I was not the only one who broke the Ministry’s laws that night. Mr. Ollivander did not knock and enter.”
Apparating directly into another wizard’s backyard was a violation of the Wizarding Privacy Act of 1894.
“He set my snake on fire,” Tom continued.
Doing unprovoked magic in another’s house could land you a sentence if the prosecution made a good enough case. That was why the ever-cautious Hyperion Malfoy had refrained from casting a charm to lighten the burden of the books I had given him or a charm to transfigure the garish bag I had conjured for him into something more palatable to his eyes.
Ollivander had set Hero on fire and it had not been self-defence. Malfoy had enlightened the boy on the loopholes of his situation. Why? I worried my lip, pondering as to who might be the puppet-master who might be behind Malfoy’s benevolence. Grindelwald? A pure-blood cult which was on the lookout for a new Dark Lord to pledge themselves to?
“I turn nine this night,” Tom was saying, “and I did not know that magic existed before I met Mr. Dumbledore. I was brought to Mr. Dumbledore’s home not of my own will and kept confined there since September. Mr. Dumbledore and his brother haven’t taught me anything at all about magic or how to do it.”
“You expect us to believe that Mr. Ollivander’s arrival snapped your disturbed, little mind which had already been overwhelmed past your limits in the last few months?” Castle Albus asked, incredulous and all the more convinced of Tom’s nature. “Surely, even Hyperion Malfoy ought to see this as far-fetched!”
It did not matter what the truth was. It only mattered what the truth was presented as. I knew it. Castle Albus knew it. Hyperion Malfoy knew it. The case of the unstable boy with psychopathic tendencies, in the hands of a suitably motivated man of influence, could very well be rechristened as the case of the wretched orphan who was well and truly caught between the Dumbledore brothers who had likely been the reason behind their sister’s demise. The Aurors would believe Ollivander’s charges because they had seen too much darkness to discount even the most improbable. However, if this reached the public, there would be an outcry; the majority of the wizarding world would plainly refuse to believe that an eight-year-old boy tried to kill Ollivander.
“I don’t need to press charges to see justice served, Riddle,” Ollivander spat. “I am more than capable of dealing with an orphan boy who has been taken on as Malfoy’s latest stooge.”
“That was uncalled for,” I cut in.
“What does the word stooge mean?” Tom asked, his gaze shifting from Ollivander to me.
This - his yearning to master knowledge - had been one of the prime reasons that had brought sorrow and death upon us in that timeline.
“A stooge, Mr. Riddle, is a person who does what another man asks without questioning,” Castle Albus said, peering over his half-moon spectacles at Tom.
“Then Mr. Malfoy must be my stooge,” Tom said wryly. My gloomy thoughts ceased as I registered his dark humour bursting through despite the plight he was in. “He did do what I requested with not a single question asked.”
“You are aware that it makes your situation all the more questionable?” Castle Albus remarked. “He is a man of considerable means, influence and wizarding skills. Why would he assist you?”
“Orphan,” Tom replied easily. “Orphans tend to provoke pity and charity, Mr. Dumbledore. More so than children suspected to be mentally ill.”
Castle Albus pursed his lips and shot me a glare, clearly suspecting that I had been the one who had told Tom of our family history. Ollivander looked confused. He did not know about Ariana. I had never told him.
“Well, well, Ollivander,” Castle Albus said smoothly, “what say you that we press no charges just this once? We wouldn’t want to misjudge an orphan, would we?”
Ollivander frowned but before he could get in a word, I spoke up. “Thank you, Albus. Tom is grateful and so am I. Now, if I may, I shall take him home.”
“Do that, Percival,” Castle Albus said, more benevolent in mien than the merry Friar of Robin Hood tales. “I shall pop in soon to see how you are faring, of course.”
“Of course,” I murmured. I nodded at Ollivander, who was purple and speechless in anger, and hastily grasped Tom by the shoulder and steered him outside.
Tom looked up at me with poorly disguised relief. I sighed and ruffled the wretched boy’s hair.
“Abe?” he asked softly.
“The seventh of January,” I muttered.
Castle Albus had influence enough to see Aberforth released immediately but he had chosen not to. Clearly, it was power-play. He was showing me who exactly owned all the pawns on this board. It rankled.
Tom was looking up at me, his features blank and his fingers trembling. I cleared my throat and said, “Home, then, my boy.”
He nodded and fell into my footsteps easily. We reached the busy Apparition point. Uncomfortable pangs of worry clutched my guts when I noticed the boy’s flinch when I grasped his shoulder to tether him to me before Apparating.
Home. It had struck me, while watching Tom and Aberforth being led away by the Ministry officials, that I had felt right at home with my brother and the boy, secluded from the hustle and bustle of the world in our little haven at Godric’s Hollow.
“Were you him?” Tom asked as I led him up the path from the gate to the front-door.
I stopped turning the key and peered at him. Castle Albus. Time and its paradoxical flow.
“The other Mr. Dumbledore told me,” Tom explained. “He said you are what he will become many years later.”
“For someone as new to the magical world as you are, you do easily believe the most outré things, my boy,” I teased him. “And here I thought you were a careful one! Abe would not be pleased. He recommends taking everything with a pinch of salt.”
Tom’s eyes flashed in mirth and he parried easily saying, “You are the Mad Hatter. It shouldn’t surprise anyone when you do strange things like changing Time.”
“I don’t go on about ravens and writing-desks, do I?” I asked, pretending to be mighty peeved at his words.
This won me a fleeting grin before he said solemnly, “Abe says you talk in your sleep about chinchillas and ink-pots.”
“Remind me to herald his return with every clichéd joke about goats and men’s beards,” I grumbled. “The gall of him! Chinchillas indeed!”
Tom’s grin stayed put this time and he wriggled past me through the open door. As he crossed me, his fingers brushed mine and he said, “I easily believed that you could play with Time, sir. I did find it hard to believe that you were him once.”
I felt a constricting pull in my throat as his words washed over me. Before I could say a word, he had already moved swiftly into the darkness of the house and I could hear him puttering about in the kitchen.
“Sir?”
I did not reply. I clutched the door-jamb and willed with all my heart that Aberforth could be here to help me cross this bridge. The boy trusted me enough to not question my frankly questionable tale of travelling through Time. He trusted me enough to wonder how I had once been the person Castle Albus now was. Trust. This had been what I had sought all this time from Tom, hadn’t it? Now that I had it, I was stricken and frightened.
“Sir?” Tom called again. “I have put the kettle on. Could you come in and make a fire in the hearth with your wand-stick? It is dark here.”
I tried to respond, but my thoughts were still swirling and my mind was being bled dry of courage and will.
Tom’s clear voice swept me from my dark thoughts as he began singing a familiar tune.
“You are old, Father William, and yet you stand on your head-
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”
I grinned despite myself when I immediately placed the reference. The Caterpillar was teaching Alice that nursery rhyme about Old Man William and his son. How apropos!
I inhaled and joined him in the ridiculous song:
“In my youth, I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I’m perfectly sure that I have none,
Why, I do it again and again!”
Father William and his son. A father and his son. I made my way to the kitchen and watched Tom singing the rhyme. His face was cast pale and pensive in the light of the single candle he had lit. Had the boy chosen the rhyme deliberately? Had he noticed my protectiveness of him and was he trying to play on my weakness by stirring that emotion in me? Then I saw the dark smudges of sleepless nights under his eyes and the matted curls of his hair.
“I will watch the kettle,” I said quietly. “Go draw yourself a bath and put on some clean clothes, will you? Off with you now.”
Tom stopped mid-rhyme and stared at me. Then he nodded and asked, “Could you light the-”
“Off with you!” I snarled, overwhelmed by the emotions fighting for precedence in my mind.
His fingers were unceremoniously shoved into his pockets and he gave me a curt nod before leaving the kitchen. I sank down into the nearest chair. Not many weeks ago, Horace Slughorn had handed me a watch and I had fallen down a rabbit hole like poor Alice. I heard the sounds of a bath being drawn. I sighed and returned my attention to the kettle. There was a cookbook left open at a page showing a cake recipe. Aberforth had probably been planning to bake a cake for the boy’s birthday. I pinched my nose, steeled myself and drew the book to me.
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External Source Text: The nursery rhyme is from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
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