WHAAAAAT!?!! You're starting over? WHY!?! It was so good before! I mean, this one is good too, but why change it? Oh, please don't change Bellatrix too much! She was my favorite character! And I wanted to see what happened in the sequel. :( Oh well, I'm sure this will be just as good... just please don't change Bellatrix. Please.

...Although I definitely laughed when Mrs. Cole said "That is absurd" to Penrose. I know you probably didn't intend for it to be a joke, but I thought it was funny. I was reminded of a certain Hogwarts professor in a fan-made production. :)

Moar plz?

This is excellent! I'm... not really sure why you're starting over, either, to be honest, but this is also amazing, and I was starting to worry you'd never write the next chapter. This version of Tom is even better than the last one. I agree that IF you include Bellatrix, she MUST be the same, but I'll understand if you don't.

Chapter 2 part 1 

The entrance to Diagon Alley required a wand. There was a special brick, three up and two across, on the far wall of the courtyard in the back of the Leaky Cauldron, which would, when tapped with a wand, open an archway into the magical district. No amount of prodding it with a magically-charged finger would make it open, because it very specifically required a wand.

This was a major oversight on Professor Penrose's part. Tom fumed for a moment before regaining control of himself.

He took a deep breath and went back into the Leaky Cauldron. The pub was quite crowded, and nobody noticed as Tom reentered. He lingered in the shadows, surveying the patronage for a while before choosing a likely-looking target. The witch in question looked to be in her early thirties, and had a warm, maternal air about her. A young boy, whom Tom assumed to be her son, was busily smearing fried eggs on his cheeks under the pretense of eating when Tom moved smoothly up to the table with his best I'm lost help me face on.

Tom didn't even have to speak; the moment she saw him, the witch smiled warmly and asked, “Do you need something, dear?”

Nervous smile. “Yes, I need to get into Diagon Alley,” Tom said, letting his voice trail up on the last syllable to make it a question. “Only…”

“You haven't got a wand?” the witch said sympathetically. Her son banged his spoon on the edge of his plate, sending his remaining eggs flying. 

Tom ducked his head and shuffled his feet, the way some of the younger children did when they were under extreme duress. “Yes,” he said. “Could you…?”

The witch smiled once more and made to stand up. “Of course, dear,” she said.

It had been surprisingly easy, Tom thought. If it had been Mrs. Cole or someone similar, there would have been questions like where are your parents, or should you really be wandering around without supervision like that? It felt like a waste, almost.

The witch ensured that her son was occupied with a slice of toast, and then led Tom back to the chilly little courtyard. She made a few idle comments about the weather as she pulled out her wand to tap three times on the brick wall…

…which buckled, shuddered and twisted dizzily before expanding into an enormous archway. The shops beyond were a mass of brilliant Christmas lights and shops advertising cauldrons and flobberworm mucus.

Tom didn't blink. 

“There you are, dear,” the witch said, patting him on the shoulder kindly.

“Thank you,” Tom said.

And he walked forward, alone, into the wizarding world.

Wizards dressed in heavy fur robes paraded through grey slush, hawking fresh diricawl eggs and Thermal Hats (”Warm your ears up a treat! Guaranteed safe!”) and goggles that would render everything in slow motion and massive, live newts. A sign propped in front of one of the nearest shops flashed between blinding shades of red and green and read, “AFTER-CHRISTMAS SALE!! ALL MARKED ITEMS HALF OFF!!”

The shops themselves had lavish window displays, filled with spindly silver mechanisms and gleaming telescopes and jarfuls of eyes or dragon spleens. A trunk shop had nothing but a single, gigantic chest in its window, nearly as long as Tom was tall and with dozens of tiny legs protruding from the bottom. A sign in the window read “Sapient Trunks: Inquire Inside!” Across the street, Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions had a sale on dress robes, savings of up to seventy percent. Everywhere Tom looked there were witches and wizards dressed in brilliantly colored robes, chattering and haggling and arguing with each other. 

Books with titles like Merlin: His Life and Legacy; Potions and Poultices: Witch Weekly's Favorite Recipes for 1936; and Horklumps, Knarls and Gnomes: A Practical Guide to Garden Pests flapped their covers at him from the brightly lit display in the window of Flourish & Blotts bookshop. Soft hoots and rustles emanated from a darkened storefront; the words Eeylops Owl Emporium were painted over the door in faded, chipped blue. A huge, tawny owl dozed on a perch above the sign.

Tom had worried a little about finding Gringotts bank, but it was instantly recognizable. He had only to turn a corner and the vast, white building with the bronze doors loomed up in front of him. 

He froze, gripped by sudden, unexpected terror. It was one thing to entertain the notion of claiming one's noble inheritance, and quite another to actually walk into a massive marble building and demand to be shown to the Gaunt family vault.

Shaking himself mentally, Tom went in.

~

Tom wished that Professor Penrose had warned him about the goblins. They were shorter than he was, with knobbly, clawed fingers and faces straight out of nightmares. And then there were the teeth…

Tom dug his fingers into the seat cushion anxiously. Upon his announcement that he was the previously unknown heir to the House of Gaunt, the goblins had gone into an uproar. Apparently Tom was not the first young wizard or witch to claim exactly that, although Tom did get special mention for being the youngest, and the goblins held Views about impostors. One of them, a particularly nasty-looking creature named Grenak, had taken a vial of Tom's blood, and then the lot of them had vanished into the heart of the bank. Tom had been waiting for nearly fifteen minutes now, and he was starting to draw curious glances from some of the other patrons.

One of them, a tanned boy who looked about Tom's age, suddenly veered away from his parents and approached Tom. The boy flopped carelessly into a nearby seat and grinned.

“Mum says she hasn't seen the goblins this upset since the Urquart scandal back when she was in school,” he said, utterly apropos of nothing.

Tom blinked. “What happened?” he asked automatically.

The boy shrugged. “Dardanos Urquart transferred his family assets to a Swiss gnome bank in protest of some new Ministry tax regulations and, since up to that point the Urquarts had always been some of Gringott's most loyal clients, the goblins screamed bloody murder. Threatened to freeze Ministry assets until the tax laws were repealed and Dardanos switched back to Gringotts. Very nasty.” He grinned again. “You really a Gaunt?”

“I… have reason to believe so,” Tom said carefully. “And you are?”

“Oh.” The boy looked vaguely surprised, but held out a hand nevertheless. “Rabastan Lestrange,” he said. 

“Ah, of course,” Tom said quickly. Professor Penrose had mentioned that the Lestranges were a Noble House, too, and no doubt Rabastan was used to being recognized on sight. He let a trace of apology color his voice as he said, “I didn't realize…”

Rabastan snorted. “Doesn't matter. Why're you wearing muggle clothes?”

Tom deliberated for a second before deciding that blunt truth was the simplest option. “My parents are dead and I grew up in a- a muggle orphanage,” he said. Muggle presumably meant non-magical, but Tom made a note to look it up later to make sure.

The other boy made a face, clearly disgusted. “Eurgh. Hard luck, that,” he said. “is it awful?”

The little honest impulse died immediately, replaced with caution. “Oh yes,” Tom said, doing his best to mirror Rabastan's disgust. “I hate it, it's dreadful.” 

“Having to live with muggles, I can't imagine…” Rabastan muttered. Then he brightened considerably and added, “Well, at least you won’t have to bother with them once school starts. You are eleven, aren't you?”

“Mm,” Tom said. “You?”

Rabastan grimaced again. “No. My birthday's not until August.”

“But you're starting at Hogwarts this fall, too, then?” Tom asked.

“Yeah. Can't wait. My brother graduated last year.”

“Really. What's he doing now?”

Rabastan shook his head. “Studying Arithmancy, of all things, in France.”

Tom didn't have a clue what Arithmancy was, so he just smiled vaguely and said, “Yes, well…”

“Mr. Riddle?”

To his credit, Tom didn't flinch when Grenak reappeared behind his shoulder, but it was a near thing. “Yes?” Tom asked. The goblin was glowering, but no more so than any of the other goblins in the bank; it seemed to be their default expression. Tom took the lack of any outright hostility as a good sign.

Still scowling, Grenak said, “Our tests came out positive. However, such things can be faked-”

Lingering irritation and anxiety from his extended wait left Tom with very little patience. He didn't bother to hear the rest of the sentence before he turned the Voice on and snapped, “Are you suggesting that I cheated?”

Grenak froze momentarily, and then gave a stiff bow. “Of… of course not, sir,” he mumbled. “It is merely Gringotts policy to ensure- but of course, in your case, the proof is self evident.”

The Voice worked on goblins, too, then. Tom filed that away for future reference.

Aloud he said, “Good.”

Rabastan gave him a thumbs-up.

~

Tom Marvolo Riddle, sole surviving member of the Noble House of Gaunt, surveyed his inheritance.

It was, in Tom's estimation, a bit meager. The vault itself, lit by luminescent blue crystals set into the ceiling, was little more than a large cave with coins and dry bones scattered over the floor. A long, emerald green snakeskin coiled around a distant stalagmite, looking so delicate that Tom worried it might collapse if he touched it. The only thing of note that Tom could see from his vantage point in the doorway was a large black trunk supported on a dozen spidery silver legs.

He ventured deeper into the vault. On closer inspection, he found that there were other things mixed in with the money and the bones. A rusty dagger with suspiciously blood-like stains, a tarnished silver tea set, broken amulets and a telescope with a cracked lens; none of it looked valuable, except perhaps an exquisite silver hand mirror with only the slightest hint of tarnish. He left it all in place, and went to check inside the trunk.

Its contents proved far more interesting. Tom found a set of silver robes, lined in dark green silk, and when he ran his fingers over the fabric it rippled like water and turned pitch black. He pulled them out to examine them more closely; they seemed about the right size, so he pulled off his sweater and tried them on. They were of a lighter material than he was used to, but they fit perfectly.

Further search of the trunk turned up several little trinkets. Tom examined them briefly before discarding all but the the two most interesting, a silver brooch shaped like a coiled snake and a small, golden ring set with a black stone. He pocketed the brooch and slipped the ring onto his finger. At the very bottom of the trunk were two wands, one long and black and the other short and rather knobbly. Tom pocketed those, too, then swept his hands around in the dark corners of the trunk, coming up empty-handed save for a reasonable amount of gold, which he added to his money bag before closing the trunk gently. Its silvery legs shuffled, and it gave off the impression of looking at him expectantly.

Tom smirked and began to total up his money. Including what he'd gotten out of the trunk, he had nearly fifty actual Galleons and another twenty or so Galleons-worth of Sickles and Knuts. If Professor Penrose had been correct about the exchange rate, Tom had well over two thousand pounds to his name, plus however much he'd left in the vault itself. It was more money than he'd ever seen in his life, and the prospect was rather dizzying. 

He rejoined Grenak shortly afterwards, the trunk skittering along in his wake. When the goblin tried to protest the removal of the trunk on the grounds that it would be too cumbersome and hinder their return to the surface, it snapped its lid menacingly and he relented. So far as Tom could see, the addition of the trunk did absolutely nothing to slow down the cart ride back up to the surface, and he suspected Grenak had objected for the sole purpose of being disagreeable. At any rate, they made it back to the lobby without any ill fortune.

~

His first order of business, now that he more or less looked the part of a wizard, was to find out what would be expected of him as the executor of the Gaunt estate. To this end, Tom ensconced himself in the first reputable-looking bookshop that he could find and hunted down the books of politics.

Magical Britain was arranged into a series of informal and highly static classes based on blood purity. Naturally the Ministry denied this on an official basis, but anyone who spent any time at all in the wizarding world knew that the purist caste system was the reality.

At the top of the proverbial hill were the Noble Houses, of which nine were currently extant. These were the families that could trace their ancestry and names right back to the twelfth century and whose ancestors had signed the Noble House Contract. Their power was twofold; not only were they the oldest wizarding families around, they also retained the right to revoke or reinstate their part of the still-extant magical contract at any time. If all nine houses were to revoke the contract at once, the Ministry would instantly shut down. Ministerial wards and spells would lose power, and the Ministry buildings would lock down. The whole of magical Britain would descend into chaos. Since this was a highly undesirable circumstance, the Ministry took revocations very seriously and the mere threat of one was usually enough to spark radical policy changes.

Within the Noble Houses themselves, the House of Black was unofficially recognized as the highest ranking. The reason for this was unclear, although some notable commentators held that it was because the Black family had been the one to organize the contract in the first place. 

Beneath the Noble Houses were the old pureblood families, those established prior to the passage of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1692. Following them were the new pureblood families, who were established afterwards. While old pureblood families were referred to universally as “old”, the newer families were arranged into generational groups, with the youngest families having the least class and the least political power. 

Then there were the halfbloods, which apparently was something of a misnomer because “halfblood” could mean everything from having all magical family members except for one muggle or muggleborn grandparent, to having one pureblood and one muggle or muggleborn parent, or anything in between. There was no practical discernment between any of the types of halfblood, which made for a massive middle class. For their size, however, they held very little power in the Ministry, since the pureblood families occupied all the top jobs. 

Lowest of all were the muggleborns, witches and wizards borne to muggle or muggleborn parents. In the view of most traditional blood purist families, a muggleborn was scarcely better than a muggle and not recognizable as a real wizard at all; however, since there were enough muggleborns to make this an impractical policy to implement in normal society, muggleborns were allowed the same basic rights as all wizards. The severe discrimination against them ensured that they didn't actually get to implement a lot of those rights, and a muggleborn witch or wizard in a job of more than moderate importance was an extreme rarity.

It all seemed a bit dodgy and arbitrary to Tom, who spent nearly half an hour pouring over the complex rank rules detailed at the beginning of Nature's Nobility before tentatively concluding that his position in a Noble House negated his probably-halfblood status and granted him the same power as any of the other, pureblood Noble Houses. Nevertheless, he decided that it would be prudent to adhere as closely as possible to Noble House etiquette so that he would hold up under what would no doubt be intense scrutiny. And, possibly, get his name changed to Gaunt. Accordingly, he found and read an analysis of Noble House politics and behavior, which turned out to be ludicrously complex and occasionally incomprehensible.

The gist of it all, however, was that Tom was allowed, even expected, to be condescending towards non-Noble House purebloods, outright rude to halfbloods, and disgusted by muggles and muggleborns. The Noble Houses themselves had a lot of internal rules involving things like the proper way to bow when being introduced to someone new (dependent upon one's age, the age of whoever one was being introduced to, the setting, et cetera) or table manners or appropriate dinnertime conversational subjects. Tom took a lot of notes with the intent to study them at length once he got back to the orphanage. 

Next he needed a full wizarding wardrobe. A member of a Noble House never went about with muggle clothing beneath their robes. At his age Tom would be expected to dress like an adult, particularly since he was the head of his family, and that meant waistcoats and cravats, apparently (Tom didn't even know what an cravat was, but it sounded hideously uncomfortable).

Doubtlessly it would be expensive. Given that he had a reasonable amount of money in his vault, Tom wasn't too worried, but he still made a mental note to take advantage of employment opportunities should they become available.

Chapter Two part Two! Yay! 

Algernon Roscoe was by all accounts a man of high repute and utmost dignity. He was not pureblood, but he served all of the oldest families just the same. His shop, an elegant establishment called Twilfit and Tattings, was renowned throughout magical Europe for being the finest clothing shop this side of the Atlantic. He was a man of refined taste and discernment, and wouldn't dream of showing disrespect to one of his many auspicious patrons.

He nearly had a heart attack when Tom entered his shop. 

It was quite theatrical, really. The delicate-looking man pressed a hand to his collarbone and made choking noises while he stared at the muggle clothes still visible under Tom's robes. Tom took a deep breath. He had prepared his speech on the way here from the book shop and he wanted to deliver it with the proper amount of force.

“Mr. Roscoe,” he said. “I am Tom R- Gaunt and I understand that you are the finest tailor in Diagon Alley. As you can clearly see, I require… suitable clothing for my official reentry to wizarding society.”

Mr. Roscoe recovered admirably. The Voice probably had something to do with it. He regained some color and straightened up. “O- of course, sir. I was not aware that the House of Gaunt was still extant, sir. What will you be needing today, sir?”

Tom allowed himself to relax slightly. Now that his introduction had been accepted, most of the danger was over. “I'm not familiar with current standards of dress,” he said. “So I will leave the specifics up to your no doubt superior taste. However, I will need something for school--Hogwarts--something for everyday wear, and probably something more formal as well.”

“Very good sir,” Mr. Roscoe said. He gestured Tom deeper into the shop. “If you will allow me to take your measurements, sir… And we can of course dispose of your current… attire, sir, if you should require.”

“That won't be necessary, Mr. Roscoe,” Tom said. “Unfortunately, my current circumstances require that I keep these, though I expect that to change eventually.”

“Just as you say, sir.” Mr. Roscoe clicked his fingers, and a long, silvery tape measure sprang to life. With dizzying speed, it began to measure Tom, going so far as to take individual measurements of his fingers. It was over inside of a minute, and a sheet of parchment appeared in Mr. Roscoe's hands as the tape measure crumpled to the floor. “Have you any preferences in regards to color, sir?”

“Well, a bit more conservative than the average, I suppose,” Tom said. A lot of the wizards he’d seen so far dressed like garish circus tents, and he wanted to avoid that if possible.

Mr. Roscoe hmmed and made a note on his parchment. “I can see you're a man of discernment, sir, I knew the moment I saw your robes, and trunk, sir, is it an antique, sir, incidentally?”

“Yes,” Tom hazarded, glancing back at the trunk, which had followed him into the shop and was looming by the counter.

“Fine taste, sir, fine taste… Now, for your everyday wear, I have several recommendations…”

And Tom nodded his way through a dizzying array of trousers and shirts and vests and no less than four kinds of bracers and what felt like hundreds of cravats, which turned out to be an odd cross between a tie and a large handkerchief, and when he had finally settled on a reasonable number of complete outfits (four), Mr. Roscoe insisted that he needed another set of robes and a cloak for cold winter. Tom assumed initially that there were only so many different ways to make a set of robes, but that turned out to be a horrible mistake. The sleeves alone came in four lengths, and each of those had a dozen styles of cut and fit. And then there were four different types of lapel, all of which looked mostly the same to Tom. Robes had rounded hoods, or peaked hoods, or no hoods at all, and then there were pockets to think about… In the end, he let Mr. Roscoe decide for him and ended up with a billowy, dark grey affair that was blessedly free of ruffles.

The cloak, at least, was easy, because the basic shape was so simple that even wizards couldn't complicate it too much. Admittedly there was a lot of embroidery on some of the more expensive ones, but Tom cut Mr. Roscoe off before he could really get started and asked for a simple black one made of wool (”Of course, sir, very sensible. Understated. An excellent choice, sir.”) and an equally plain silver clasp.

The dress robes, impossibly, were even worse. In combination with the usual concerns about style and cut and fit and other incomprehensible things there were fiddly little bits like decorative buttons and jerkins that went over the robes but only for very specific styles, and then gloves and hats and even more cravats and…

Tom picked the set that looked the most comfortable. They were of the jerkin-over-robes variety, with black robes and a dark green jerkin. 

Mr. Roscoe then insisted that he needed at least two pairs of boots, one for casual daywear and one for the dress robes, and Tom relented wearily. This was relatively painless, however, since every style looked the same to Tom and he simply pointed to the cheapest pairs.

Nearly two hours after Tom had walked into the shop, all that was left was his Hogwarts uniform. This seemed to cause Mr. Roscoe almost physical pain, since it consisted, not of waistcoats and cravats, but sweaters and plain ties which were apparently charmed to take on House colors after something called the Sorting (Tom didn't ask, but resolved to look it up when he bought his school books later). Mr. Roscoe did point out that his sweaters and ties were made of the finest materials money could buy and were far better crafted than the ungainly concoctions sold by some of his competitors, but to Tom's relief there was only so much that could be done to a standard wool sweater.

“Will this be all, Master Gaunt?” Mr. Roscoe asked at long last.

“Yes, thank you,” Tom said.

“Very good. If you will just give me a moment to fix them up properly, sir…” Mr. Roscoe pulled out his wand and began to flick it deftly over the clothes. “Twilfit and Tattings clothes are charmed against dirt, tears, and basic concussive hexes. In the event that you do experience rips, stains, et cetera within the next seven years, we will mend or replace the item in question at no charge. And, of course, sir, Twilfit and Tattings clothes come with a complimentary growth charm, such that they will adjust their sizes in tandem with your own growth…”

And that, Tom supposed, was the benefit of buying from the best. It meant you didn't have to keep doing it every time you grew an inch. “Excellent,” he said. “How much do I owe you?” 

“Hm, let me see, sir,” Mr. Roscoe murmured. “Four waistcoats, two trousers, the shirts… Classic cut loose-sleeve day robes… Dress robes… the boots… bracers… hat and gloves… wool cloak and silver clasp… Hogwarts uniform… six cravats and one tie.  Ah, twenty-one Galleons and six Sickles, Master Gaunt.”

Tom pulled out his money bag and counted out the appropriate amount while Mr. Roscoe finished with the charms. Then Mr. Roscoe directed him to a dressing room in the back of the shop, and Tom changed out of his muggle clothes. He felt a bit foolish, especially since it took him about a dozen tries to figure out the cravat. Especially because he would have to change back into his muggle clothes in a few hours anyway.

Still, he ended up looking quite... wizardly once everything was on. Pinstriped black waistcoat and dark blue cravat, then the strange, liquid-smooth robes he'd found in his vault, and the thick cloak slung over his shoulders and clasped at his throat. The boots, though heavier than he was used to, were flexible and leagues more comfortable than his old shoes. Tom was never wearing muggle shoes ever again. 

By the time he finished changing, Mr. Roscoe had subdued his trunk and packed away the rest of his purchases. He bowed as soon as he saw Tom, muttering something about elegance and native dignity. 

~

An unexpected side effect of wizarding clothing which Tom noticed very quickly was that it made him look a lot more impressive and Noble House-like than he had previously. It became a lot easier to navigate through the crowded streets because people moved out of his way. That had never happened before, with the exception his fellow orphans, who were all rightfully terrified of him. It was something he could get used to very quickly.

Tom was rather hungry by now, so he stopped in a little cafe and ordered a sandwich for himself. While he waited for it to arrive, he pulled out his Hogwarts supply list and examined it in detail for the first time. His uniform was obviously taken care of, except for the dragon hide gloves, but he still needed his books, a cauldron, telescope, scales, crystal phials, a potion making kit, and a wand. Admittedly, Tom had found those two wands in his Gringotts vault, but he wanted to buy one specifically for himself. It felt… right, somehow, so when he finished his sandwich he set out with intent to find a wand shop.

~

It was a dusky little store with grimy windows. The peeling golden sign read Ollivander's: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C.

A bell over the door glinged as Tom entered.  Inside the shop was mostly bare. A little desk in the centre of the room took the place of a counter, and besides a few spindly-legged chairs and a small potted fern, the only other furniture was a series of enormous shelves. The shelves held hundreds upon hundreds of boxes, which presumably housed the wands. 

The air itself... tingled. It felt curiously as though someone or something was whispering, just out of range of Tom's hearing. It sent chills down Tom's spine; he felt oddly as though he had just entered a church during a funeral service, or perhaps a haunted graveyard right before the ghosts came out.

At last, needing to break the oppressive silence, Tom called out softly, “Hello?”

There was a very faint click, and a tall, bony man materialized out of the shadows. He moved soundlessly up to the desk.

“Mr. Ollivander?” Tom guessed, swallowing his instinctive nervousness. The man did not look normal; he was too thin and too tall and too pale, and his fine, silver hair stuck out from his head like a bizarre mockery of a halo. Large, silvery eyes shone like twin moons in the uncertain light. Unlike every other wizard that Tom had met so far, Mr. Ollivander dressed not in robes but in a faded dark grey suit, which was tailored to match his skeletal frame. It was not a nice look.

“I am he,” Mr. Ollivander said softly. His weird eyes raked over Tom's face. “To whom do I owe the pleasure of this rare midwinter visit?”

If the wand shop was a haunted graveyard, then Mr. Ollivander was the unscrupulous undertaker who stole from the unquiet dead. Tom shivered. “Gaunt,” he said. “Tom Gaunt.” 

The wandmaker nodded slowly. “Ah, yes,” he murmured. “I had heard a rumor that Gringotts bank recognized an heir today.”

“Ye-es,” Tom said. 

“It seems only yesterday that your grandfather was here, buying his first wand. Seven and a half inches long, unyielding, chestnut and dragon heartstring. A good wand for warding. He was the last of his family to do it, you know.”

“Is that so?” Tom asked faintly.

Mr. Ollivander nodded slowly. “Oh, yes. Marvolo became a severe and paranoid recluse after his time at Hogwarts, and, as I understand it, squandered much of the family fortune on the... high life, as I believe it is commonly called. When it came time for his children to purchase their first wands, he was in dire monetary straights and refused to spend the money on a trip to Diagon Alley. I believe they bought their wands from a local wandmaker called Hamilton.” As he spoke, Mr. Ollivander drifted forward until he was almost nose-to-nose with Tom.

“…Right,” Tom said, leaning backwards nervously.

“Hm,” Mr. Ollivander said. “Well, now, Master Gaunt… It is good to have your family's patronage back once again.”

Tom desperately wished that Mr. Ollivander would blink. His own eyes were starting to water in sympathy. 

“Which is your wand arm?” Mr. Ollivander asked suddenly.

“Er. Left,” Tom said.

“I see,” Mr. Ollivander murmured. Without warning he stepped away from Tom and fairly glided over to the shelves. He flitted around, pulling down boxes at random, as he spoke. “No two Ollivander wands are exactly the same, Mr. Riddle. We use a variety of woods and one of three highly potent magical substances in the construction of our wands. It is the combination of traits of both wood and core that give a wand its character, and each wand must be properly matched to its owner. The wand, as they say, chooses the wizard.  This is, of course, a gross simplification of a very subtle process, but the general idea is correct.” He returned to the desk, and let the boxes cascade messily onto it, then opened one of the boxes and pulled out a stubby reddish wand. “Now, then, Master Gaunt, try this one. Holly and unicorn tail, six and a quarter inches, rather bendy.” 

Tom took it, unsure of what to do.

“Go on,” Mr. Ollivander said encouragingly, “give it a wave.”

Tom obliged, but Mr. Ollivander snatched the wand out of his hand immediately, muttering, “Not that one, I think…” He set the wand aside and opened another box. “Perhaps this one? Ash and dragon heartstring, ten inches, nice and whippy…”

Once more, Tom waved the wand and once more Mr. Ollivander took it back. “Try this one. Oak and phoenix feather, nine inches, rigid-- No, I think not. Ah… Pear and unicorn, ten and three quarter inches, quite supple.”

Scarcely had Tom touched this wand than Mr. Ollivander snatched it away. “No, no, definitely not. Let's see, ebony and dragon heartstring, nine inches, brittle. Try--”

Tom tried, to no avail. Mr. Ollivander handed him wand after wand, and Tom’s fingers began to chafe and, eventually, go numb as each wand was yanked unceremoniously away. As the pile of discarded boxes grew ever higher, the eerie wandmaker became first cheerful and then positively manic in his excitement. “Difficult customer, eh?” he said. “Always a pleasure, Master Gaunt, always a delight. Let's see… Last one of this batch, Master Gaunt, and then the real fun begins. Beechwood and unicorn, twelve inches, stiff… And no. Excellent.”

Now Mr. Ollivander returned to his shelves, mumbling to himself softly. He pulled down six or seven boxes before returning to Tom. “Here we are, Master Gaunt. If none of these suit you, we'll break into the special collection.”

“The- the special collection?” Tom asked, trying to rub some life back into his fingers.

Mr. Ollivander smiled. “Indeed, Master Gaunt. I keep a small number of particularly finicky wands in the back, for cases just like this one. And here you are, walnut and phoenix feather, eleven and three quarter inches, rigid.” Tom might have imagined it, but he thought he felt something as he flicked this wand carelessly. Mr. Ollivander yanked it out of his hand same as ever, though, and produced “elder and dragon heartstring, twelve inches, unyielding.” Seconds later it, too, was added to the pile of discards.

The third and fourth wands were treated with equal disregard by the wandmaker. Tom started to lose hope that he would ever get a wand at all. 

“And… yew and phoenix feather, thirteen inches, inflexible…”

Tom took the unusually pale wand and gave it a careless little flick.

The room temperature plummeted. Brilliant silver sparks cascaded from the end of the wand like bits of shattered glass from a broken mirror, and Mr. Ollivander cried, “Yes! Oh, indeed, yes. Very good. I knew we'd get there in the end. Well done, Master Gaunt.”

Rather dazedly, Tom paid Mr. Ollivander seven Galleons for his wand. He was on the point of leaving the shop when he remembered.

 “Mr. Ollivander?”

“Yes, Master Gaunt?”

“Earlier today I found some old wands in my vault at Gringotts,” Tom said, returning to the desk and pulling them out of his pocket. “Could you identify them for me?”

Mr. Ollivander took the wands without saying anything, examining them both minutely. “Yes,” he murmured after a while. “Yes, I believe I can. In fact…” He waved the stubby, rough wand vaguely. “This one was a commission of mine. I made it especially for your great-great grandfather, Marcellus Gaunt, at the end of my apprenticeship. Un-sanded blackthorn and dragon heartstring, eight and a quarter inches, a very volatile wand for a very volatile man. Quite powerful, with poor precision, which suited Marcellus perfectly.”

“And the other?” Tom asked, taking back the blackthorn wand and pocketing it. 

Mr. Ollivander turned his attention to the longer, black wand in his hand with a good deal more interest than he had the previous one. “Ebony,” he said after a while. “Thirteen inches. The core…” He squinted at the wand, and then suddenly blanched. “Ah.” Very carefully, Mr. Ollivander handed the wand back to Tom, who took it with some confusion. “Basilisk crest, Master Gaunt, a highly dangerous thing to put into a wand. Wandmaker lore holds that only two wizards, Herpo the Foul and Salazar Slytherin himself, were able to manage it without getting themselves messily killed. At a guess, I would say this wand was Slytherin's, since Herpo's was most likely burnt following his death. If it has accepted you, which I must assume it has if you've been carrying it around in your robes all day, you should be able to use it with no trouble. Anyone else would likely find themselves facing fatal backfires if they tried.”

“I see,” Tom said, adding Herpo the Foul and Salazar Slytherin to his list of things to look up. “Thank you.”

Mr. Ollivander bowed low. “Thank you, Master Gaunt, and good day.”

~

Tom weighed his options carefully before choosing a bookstore. There were five of them in Diagon Alley, of varying quality. Eventually he decided that, Noble House or no, he had spent far too much on his wardrobe to afford buying his textbooks new as well. Besides, the Gaunt family had teetered on the edge of poverty in recent generations, and a poor Noble House was still a good deal higher ranking than a rich pureblood family. Very likely no one would care much if his textbooks were second hand, especially if he managed to look and act the part of a Noble House in all other respects.

So he went into the largest of the second hand book shops, a haphazard but cheerily lit place called Obscuro Books. He browsed the shelves for a while, pulling down books that looked interesting and keeping an eye out for the specific topics that had caught his attention throughout the day. Weight turned out not to be a problem in this endeavor, since his trunk proved more than willing to act as an impromptu book cart. Last of all, Tom hunted down reasonably well preserved copies of all of his textbooks, and then went to find a quiet corner to read.

In an unwieldy tome of ancient Greek history, he found an annoyingly brief account of Herpo the Foul’s eventful life: basilisks and something called a Horcrux and entire villages massacred. Tom scanned the rest of the book, but no further detail was given; even the glossary entry for Horcrux said only “a piece of vilest Dark magic and a travesty against the natural world,” which, while interesting enough in its own right, did nothing to assuage Tom’s curiosity.

Much more helpful was the beaten copy of Hogwarts, a History that Tom had found. It detailed not only the Sorting Ceremony (four houses, assigned by a vaguely sentient hat for some inexplicable reason) and the historical significance of Salazar Slytherin (Tom wondered if they mightn't be related somehow. It would explain why Slytherin's wand was in the Gaunt vault, at any rate), but also some of the more fascinating quirks of the school itself. The legend of the Chamber of Secrets resonated particularly strongly, because it was nice knowing that his ability to talk to snakes was an extremely rare magical gift which he shared with with one of the four most influential wizards of British history. But there was also the shifting architecture, which rearranged itself constantly for reasons no one really understood, or the ghosts and the resident poltergeist, or the secret passages that had been lost for decades…

When at last he had to put down Hogwarts, a History or risk dying of sheer impatience (he wanted to go now), Tom turned his attention to his stack of miscellany. 

Over the course of the next hour he learnt about the Goblin Wars of the early medieval ages and the 1307 Goblin Treaty that ended them, of the simultaneous subjugation of house elves, of the witch burnings that lead to the 1692 passage of the International Statute of Secrecy, of how the Auror Office was established by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in 1756 to deal with goblin uprisings and the 1789 treaty that forged a lasting if uneasy peace with the goblins and led the Auror Office to switch its focus to Dark wizards, that the Ministry relocated to London in 1805 when Alfred the Unstable ate an entire boiled mandrake root and his subsequent explosion burned the entire Ministry building to the ground…

He read about wardsmiths and curse-breakers and the Ministry's Thaumaturgical Regulation Committee, which sanctioned “safe,” or more accurately Latin-based, spells and suppressed those that had their roots in other languages. Fantastical creatures and Merlin and infamous Dark Lords and alchemists and an abysmally stupid-sounding sport called Quidditch…

Tom only stopped when he realized that the shop was about to close. He hurried to pay for his books, casting a last regretful glance back at the shelves as he left.

It was too late to buy the rest of his supplies, since many of the shops had already closed for the evening by now. Instead, Tom returned to the Leaky Cauldron. He ducked into a bathroom to change back into his muggle clothes, taking care to transfer two of his wands, Slytherin's and the one he'd bought from Mr. Ollivander, and packed away his robes in the trunk. He deliberated about the trunk for a while, worried that the muggles would notice it.

At last he decided that the trunk most likely had some kind of muggle repellant charm on it, since one of the books had mentioned that most wizards charmed their possessions with such things as a matter of course. To this end he performed an experiment that entailed standing outside the Leaky Cauldron with the trunk and watching the muggles walk by without so much as a second glance. Satisfied that the trunk would not inadvertently break the Statute of Secrecy, Tom returned to Wool's Orphanage with it trailing behind him like a bizarre pet. Once a pigeon flew too close, and the trunk launched into the air after it. The lid snapped shut, and all that remained was a puff of grey feathers.

“Er,” Tom said. The trunk opened, revealing folded robes and spellbooks but no dead pigeon. It shuffled its legs apologetically. “Well… I suppose that's alright, then,” Tom said. 

And he went home.

Well stated. LUGGAGE <3.

Oh, and the first chapter of this is up on ff now, for anyone who's interested.