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Harry walked slowly through sun-soaked corridors of Hogwarts’s upper floors, peering carefully at each portrait and tapestry, each unique view of the grounds through the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the outer wall. It was the day before they were set to return to London on the Hogwarts Express and the castle was virtually deserted, everyone down on the Quidditch pitch or by the lake, soaking up the sun. Harry, however, had opted for the more sobering task of soaking up every last bit of magic he could, bidding a fond farewell to all his favorite parts of school and creating a store of happy memories, to tide him over for the impending two months of misery at the Dursleys’.
Goodbye, painting of the picnic set upon by Knarls…goodbye, Charms classroom…’bye, storage closet with the stash of Dungbombs hidden in the wall cache…That last one had really come in useful when he and Ron were getting revenge for Malfoy’s stupid midnight-duel prank.
He had just reached the end of one hallway—he was fairly near to the gargoyle that guarded the Headmaster’s office, he noticed vaguely—when suddenly he was assaulted by a series of loud bangs and a string of curses the likes of which would probably make Aunt Petunia gasp in horror and press her hands over Dudley’s ears. He rushed around the corner, wondering if someone was hurt or if it was just another foul-mouthed Jarvey Fred and George managed to smuggle in. What he very much wasn’t expecting to see was Tom Riddle—a fellow first year, but otherwise different from Harry in every way: Slytherin, top of his class, every teacher’s favorite student—kicking furiously at the shins of a suit of armor, letting off sparks from his wand and shouting invective at no one in particular.
”Stupid—bleeding—old fool—just wait until I’m of age, then I’ll show him ‘character-building experience in the wider nonmagical world…aaaagggghhh!”
Harry got the distinct feeling he should turn and go back the way he came, and was in the process of doing so immediately; but when Riddle let out that last primal scream, he couldn’t help but make a small, surprised noise of his own. He didn’t think he’d ever seen the boy this frustrated before, in any of their shared Gryffindor-Slytherin lessons. Every spell and potion and theory question, Riddle had always gotten on the first try, even the really hard Switching Spell that stumped Hermione for a whole half hour.
Somehow hearing that tiny cough above the racket of his own tantrum, the green-robed boy turned as if on a swivel and went eerily silent at once, his dark eyes boring into Harry. It felt a lot like being pinned under the gaze of Hedwig when he dawdled in giving her her portion of morning bacon.
“Er, hey Riddle—“
”How. Much. Did you hear.”
”Nothing!” Harry said, realizing as his voice jumped three octaves that his lie wouldn’t fly any better than that one ancient Cleansweep Five in the broom shed. He hung his head in defeat. “Um, a bit? Just some stuff about an ‘old crackpot’ you really wanted to hurt, and some swear words that all rhymed—“
”Shit and bleedin’ piss,” Riddle snarled. “Look, Potter, you’d better not tell anyone about—“
”Did Professor Dumbledore tell you you couldn’t stay over for the summer, too?” he blurted, acting on a random hunch.
Now it was the Slytherin who looked panicky, glancing from side to side as if someone might pop out of the walls (well, at Hogwarts, there was always a nonzero chance Peeves might do just that). “What—how did you know—I mean, what would make you think—“
“That thing you said before,” Harry explained. “‘Character-building experience in the wider nonmagical world’—that’s exactly what the Headmaster said, when I asked if I really had to go back to my relatives. They…” He hesitated for a minute, then thought why the hell not. “They hate magic. Even scrubbing floors all summer with the house-elves would be loads better than staying with them, trust me…”
Riddle crossed his arms over his chest, glowering—though seemingly at thin air and the universe at large, rather than Harry in particular. “…My foster parents gave me money for the bus and kicked me out last September,” he said flatly. “Said they’d been more than generous enough to let me stay after I got my Hogwarts letter, and that if I ‘darkened their doorway again with my devil-worship’, they’d call the coppers…and I’m not going back to Wool’s again, they’ll just send me on to St. Brutus’s…!”
Harry couldn’t help but let out a dry, mirthless laugh at the irony: apparently Hogwarts’ perfect, model student also lived with cruel Muggles and was regularly threatened with Reform School For the Incurably Criminal, just like him. Not so different after all…
“My aunt and uncle left for Majorca a week ago, when my cousin’s private school let out for the holidays,” he revealed. “They told me in a letter last week—said to ‘borrow money for the bus’ and get myself to my neighbor Mrs. Figg’s house, and that they’d see me in mid-August if I didn’t blow myself up first.”
“Salazar. Bleedin’ Muggles.” Riddle gave the suit of armor one last, halfhearted kick, then dodged nimbly away when it tried to cuff him in retaliation with its gauntleted fist. “I don’t think old Bumblemore’s even met an actual one in his life…” He was silent for a long while, staring at his shoes as he scuffed the floor with one toe; Harry wondered if maybe he should just go now, pretend this never happened—
“Potter,” the other boy said suddenly, looking up and holding him once again in that arresting gaze.
”Um. Yes?” He stopped in mid-turn, wobbling slightly.
”How do you feel about breaking rules?”
Harry stared at him. Was this a joke? He may be only a first year, but in his ten months here he already had a well-earned reputation. If anything, it was Riddle—he of the spotless record and award for perfect attendance—whose willingness to step outside the lines was in question.
”Well…in March I got caught smuggling a dragon egg up to the Astronomy Tower, and during my detention for it I almost got trampled by a thestral, a unicorn and then a centaur.” He grinned. “It was pretty brilliant—one of my favorite memories from this year.”
Riddle didn’t scoff or recoil in horror, as Harry might’ve expected. Instead, his lips slowly curled into a wicked grin of his own as he continued to stare at Harry, his eyes lighting up with a kind of sharp intelligence that he’d definitely never shown in class.
”I’ll tell you what, Potter,” he said, nodding in satisfaction, as if Harry had just passed some undisclosed test. “When we take the Express tomorrow, sit next to me. And when we disembark…”
He turned and began walking away, tossing the last words nonchalantly over his shoulder.
”…you and I will take the bus together.”
*
”B-but where exactly are we g-going?” Harry asked, shouting to make himself heard over the screeching of the Knight Bus’s brakes (and the groans of its other passengers) and stammering his words every time they hit a particularly large bump. “The L-Leaky Cauldron? We c-could stay in Diagon…”
Really, he thought as the bus popped through time and space again—the view out his window changed from one of rolling hills and sheep to a crowded city street, and then a rocky shoreline—he’d happily go to Timbuktu if Riddle declared that their destination, as long as he didn’t have to go back to Privet Drive. When he’d done as he’d been told this morning and gotten off the train with him, the Slytherin had promptly shrunk both their trunks down to the size of berry punnets (“The platform’s our last chance to do real magic before the Trace comes into play,” he’d muttered, while Harry marveled at the advanced Transfiguration), then marched him through the barrier and into the street outside Kings Cross, where he stuck his left hand out into a torrent of rush-hour traffic and summoned the royal-purple, triple-decker monstrosity as if out of its own pocket dimension, other cars and pedestrians continuing to flow around it unbothered.
“Ha! It’s real!” he’d laughed as he dragged Harry up the stairs and into a seat in the back, tossing a few Sickles the driver’s way as they passed. “I wasn’t sure if Zabini was having me on…I suppose he knows I’d hex him senseless next September if he lied to me though. Oh well, I almost feel bad for nicking those Sickles off him now.”
Now, about a quarter-hour and several cases of whiplash later, Riddle shook his head at Harry’s question, keeping a close eye on the aisle (for ‘busybody adults’, he’d explained) while the Gryffindor took in the sights. “We can’t stay in the magical world,” he said, though he sounded annoyed by this too. “If I learned anything in Slytherin, it’s that all the wixen families know each other; two boys on the younger side without any adults will draw attention, and that’s the last thing we want. No, we’ll go to London proper, where no one gives a toss and we can blend in with all the rabble.”
Harry quickly decided that he much preferred this version of Riddle, who occasionally dropped his h’s and behaved sort of like a character out of an adventure novel, to the teacher’s pet who’d driven Hermione up the wall all last year with his 105% exam-score average. “Okay,” he said cheerfully, watching as the Bus popped again, this time to the middle of a pasture crowded with cows. “Sounds good to me.”
*
They’d gotten off the bus in central London and had been wandering for a bit, Harry starting to grow slightly hungry but nowhere close to the levels of starvation he was used to enduring, when they were suddenly accosted by a tired-looking woman in cargo shorts, a lanyard, and a T-shirt printed with the name of some kind of museum. His radar screamed busybody adult!, but to his surprise, Riddle placed a hand on his arm to stop him when he made to bolt back down the street.
”Oh, gosh,” the woman said, bending down anxiously to look into their faces. “Are you lads here for the Summer Continued Learning Program? I could’ve sworn I did a head count but some of you always seem to slip the net every year…thank goodness, the director would’ve had my head…”
”No, we’re just—“ Harry began, but Riddle immediately slipped back into his posh, ‘may-I-have-an-unlimited-pass-to-the-Restricted-Section-please-Professor-Slughorn’ voice and said, “Yes, ma’am, we are. And we’re very sorry, we weren’t trying to make trouble, it’s just that we’ve never been to the city before and got turned around.”
“I thought you said no adults!” Harry hissed to him as the woman led them back to a larger group of kids, after giving them each a lanyard of their own to loop around their necks. Everyone appeared to be congregating around the front steps of the same museum from her shirt.
”Hush, Potter. Haven’t you ever seen one of these inane ‘children’s summer enrichment’ programs before? They always have snacks—good ones, from Waitrose sometimes. And there’s about one adult for every twenty of us, it’ll be no trouble giving them the slip if it’s a bust.”
He turned out to be right. Harry and Tom spent the rest of the afternoon touring the Natural History Museum (he learned all about Darwin’s finches, while Riddle tried to puzzle out if any of the dinosaur bones were actually dragons), eating delicious egg-salad sandwiches, and causing distractions whenever the lady seemed about to ask for their home telephone numbers.
*
When all the other children were lined up on the street outside, their parents pulling up to the kerb one by one to take them home to three-bedroom homes in the suburbs, the two young wizards did indeed give the group ‘the slip’ and ducked into a bathroom, where they discussed next steps.
“The museum is closing soon,” Tom (Harry had just naturally started thinking of him as ‘Tom’ over the course of the day, since the tour-guide woman called everyone by their first names) said, fixing his hair and shirtsleeves in the mirror. “We need to move somewhere else—preferably a secure place, where we can stay overnight.”
And Harry grinned, because this time it was him who had just gotten a brilliant idea.
”Tom,” he said, “when you went to Muggle primary before Hogwarts, did you ever read kids’ novels—you know, for book reports and things?”
Tom turned from his reflection to stare at Harry, a furrow appearing in his brow. “No, whenever they assigned those I usually did Dickens or one of the Greek tragedies. Why?”
His mind called up long afternoons wiled away in the school library, his small body tucked in between the shelves while Dudley terrorized the playground, his best memories from his life before magic. “Have you ever heard of a book called From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler?”
*
“This is absolutely brilliant,” he half-laughed, the sound echoing slightly off the high ceiling of the empty museum. “It’s almost like an actual wilderness campout!”
They were lying in a small gap between the wall and one of the large-scale exhibits in the building’s Africa wing, their spare Hogwarts robes piled around them in a sort of “nest” in place of actual pillows and blankets. It was surprisingly comfortable, but Harry couldn’t even think about going to sleep yet. He was too busy staring up and out into the room, dimly lit now by nothing but floor lighting, so that the life-size dioramas of animals grazing on the Serengeti could almost be real—the reclining lions and okapi just getting ready to bed down for the night, like him and Tom.
“Go to sleep, Harry,” the aforementioned boy mumbled from where he was curled on his side next to Harry, facing the wall instead of all the wonders spread out before them. “You’ll regret this when the alarm rings at five in the morning, you know.”
They’d agreed to rise before the sun was up tomorrow and move back to one of the bathrooms, where they’d keep hidden until the museum opened its doors and they could safely blend again with the tourists. Harry was very glad he’d packed Dudley’s repaired alarm clock when he left for Hogwarts last September, as even a simple Tempus would set off the Trace in this deserted Muggle area.
”I can sleep whenever I want tomorrow, as long as we can find a park or something,” he said brazenly. “It’s summer! Who’s going to tell me different?” He’d listened to Dudley crow about this sort of thing during the holiday breaks for years, his cousin staying up all night on his computer and then dozing on the couch with cartoons and a bag of crisps, while Harry had to get up even earlier than during the school year to tend Petunia’s garden before the heat hit. Experiencing this heady freedom for himself for the first time was quite a rush.
”I’ll tell you different with my wand if you don’t be quiet and let me sleep. Is this the sort of nonsense that goes on in the Gryffindor dorms?”
”You can’t hex me, you said it yourself! The Trace—“
”Yeah, well, I can still stick it right in your…”
They went on like this for a while longer, until traded threats and insults faded into yawns that proved contagious, and soon both boys were asleep, dwarfed by the shadow of the polyurethane giraffe.
*
The first month or so of their summer was almost idyllic, the best by far that Harry’d ever had—maybe better, even, than staying at Hogwarts and earning his keep beside the house-elves would’ve been. At the castle he’d have had a real bed and his wand and magic, yes; but he would’ve also had to reckon with daily chores and the same old nine o’clock curfew. And it might have gotten awfully lonely, too—especially without Tom.
The summer continued learning program they’d fallen in with the first day ran three times a week, it turned out; and the tours rotated between all the museums and institutions in the area, so they had their pick of both themed activities and places to sleep at night. Nobody ever seemed to get around to checking if Harry Potter and Tom Riddle were actually registered, or which of the gaggle of parents who flocked to drop-off and pickup they belonged to.
Every morning, they slipped out of their latest ‘campground’ and out onto the streets, where all of London awaited as their playground, limited only by how far they could walk (or hop a trolley, or stow away on a Tube car) in a single day. There were libraries and parks (including plenty with well-shaded areas where Harry could take a kip after staying up past midnight), squares and plazas with statues almost as old and interesting as the ones at Hogwarts, shops and open markets with a high tolerance for long ‘browsing’ sessions. Cinemas came equipped with heavenly air-conditioning and could provide an entire day’s entertainment, if they managed to sneak past the front desk and into one of screening rooms; one action film and horror thriller and meandering love story after another, with plenty of abandoned popcorn and sweets to collect from the aisles in between showings. They rotated through all the clothing in their trunks (after a week stuffed to the bottom and forgotten about, used shirts came to seem almost fresh again), and kept clean enough with sinks and soap dispensers and automatic hand-dryers, plus the occasional splash in a fountain before they were chased off, dripping wet and laughing like mad.
Sometime after the first two weeks, they began to grow a little tired of their standard diet of packaged Waitrose lunches, stolen snacks, and the veritable treasure trove they’d amassed by simply sticking their wands up vending machine chutes and giving a few pokes (Harry had been in heaven for days on end, trying all the Muggle sodas and packaged treats he’d never been allowed at the Dursleys). The many kebab shops, chippies, and ice cream stands that they saw every day out on the pavements or in the parks began to emit an irresistible siren song, and for that they would need cold, hard Muggle cash. Luckily, Tom had almost as many ideas for how to acquire money as he did rhyming Cockney insults: that is, a seemingly inexhaustible number.
”Clear off,” he’d commanded one day, when they wandered out to a quiet residential street, lined with leafy trees and elegant old townhouses, and encountered a trio of girls running a corner lemonade stand. “You can keep what you’ve earned so far, but me and my friend here will be running this little operation for the remainder of the day. Come back after sunset—we’ll leave the table, cooler and any beverages we have left over.”
The tallest and bossiest of the girls looked like she might argue, but backed down after a pointed look from Tom, a subtle head shake from Harry, and her friends desperately tugging at her elbows as they already began moving along down the street. Thanks to Tom’s sales skills (he favored what he called an “ultra-hard sell”) and Harry’s newfound ability to make his green eyes large and nearly-liquid behind his glasses, they sold out of all the ‘appropriated’ inventory long before evening fell.
Or they’d loiter in the small courtyards outside office buildings around lunchtime, waiting for well-dressed businessmen to come and eat their takeaway curries in the sunshine; then, when a mark was settled and comfortable, they’d strike, rushing the man’s feet and rubbing hard at his leather shoes with paper towels, pleading for payment afterward for the “polishing job”. In about half of cases, the adult decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and threw them a few quid; in the other half, those same leather shoes weren’t very useful for chasing two fast, fleeing young boys. The same principle applied to car windshields during long traffic lights.
Or sometimes—
“What charity did you say you were collecting for, again?” said a nice older lady when they rang her doorbell, already reaching for her purse. They were canvassing the entire neighborhood that day, dressed in their lanyards and matching shirts cadged from the museum gift shop, for an ‘air of officialdom’.
“Healthy meals for needy orphans,” Harry answered promptly, the not-quite-lie (He and Tom both did have dead parents and kebabs had plenty of important protein!) rolling easily off his lips. “It’s part of our civic-leadership summer program at the museum.” She clucked her tongue and cooed, handing over several pound notes while Tom looked on proudly.
Just as they were leaving (after a cup of tea and a scone each, “for being such good-hearted lads”), a vaguely-familiar face popped over the bannister of the upstairs landing, looking down on them in the vestibule.
”Gran, who’s that at the door—hey! You’re the boys from my lemonade stand!”
“It was lovely to meet you madam, haveagooddaygoodbye!” Tom said in the closest thing he could manage to a full on shout while still remaining polite, and then they were halfway down the block before the lemonade girl could even make it down the stairs.
”Mrs. Figg got me some fish and chips once, when I came along to help with her shopping,” Harry said later, biting into the crispy breaded filet and greasy fried potatoes all in one go, groaning in pleasure with what very little room he had left in his mouth. “But the ones we’ve had here in London all tasted loads better.”
”That’s because food always tastes better, when it’s bought with a day’s honest wages,” Tom said wisely, wiping his lips with the newsprint their meal had come wrapped in.
*
”Now remember what we practiced,” Tom whispered as they approached the check-in desk, taking Harry’s hand and mussing his hair a bit with the other, so that his wild curls tangled into a truly hopeless bird’s nest. “Follow my lead.”
”Yeah, yeah, I know.”
It was the last day of July—the hottest day of the summer so far, and also coincidentally Harry’s twelfth birthday—and they had woken up with the singular goal of breaching a Shangri-La under far heavier guard than a mere cinema or bookshop: the local outdoor community swimming pool.
”Hello miss,” Tom greeted the woman manning the entrance, tilting his head and flashing his dimples. “My little brother and I are here to swim, is that alright?”
Harry made a show of holding onto the edge of the desk with his fingers and bouncing up and down on his tiptoes. It was annoying to always have to play the ‘cute baby brother’ in these scenarios just because of his (lack of) height, but he couldn’t deny its effectiveness.
Looking a bit dazed from the ruthless charm assault she’d just been subjected to, the woman gave them a smile of her own. “Alright then kiddos, I’ll just need to see your pool passes or wristbands, then you can go have fun.”
Right on cue, Tom made his face fall like a ton of bricks, two lines of anxiety appearing on his forehead under his perfect curled lock of hair. “I…passes? Wristbands?”
“Tom!” Harry yelped in alarm, tugging harder on the hand Tom was ‘holding’. ”Mum didn’t say anything about wristbands!”
”No—no, she didn’t…” Tom made as if he were just muttering to himself, but he kept one gimlet eye on the counter lady at all times. “She must have forgotten to mention—“
”Maybe she forgot after having too much adult fruit juice, like last time?” he said innocently. Merlin, I never thought I’d be happy I still looked about nine years old…
”Shh, Harry, not so loud!”
The woman looked very uncertain now, chewing at her lip as she looked between their two upturned faces. “You can’t enter the pool without a pass or wristband.”
”Yes, ma’am, I know, but you see—“
”We can’t go swimming?” Harry continued, letting his lower lip tremble just enough to complete the effect without being ‘too maudlin’, as he’d practiced over and over till Tom pronounced it satisfactory. “But…but Tommy, I’m so hot. We walked all the way here! And Mum said she’d thrash us if we came back before dinnertime…”
”It’s all right, Harry, it’ll all be alright.” In contrast to Harry’s openly woeful act, Tom put on an expression of immense bravery under pressure, chin held high and face tight with the ‘effort’ it took not to crumble. “I…I understand, ma’am. We’ll go, but if you wouldn’t mind letting my brother sit down for a minute and have some water first…we really did walk thirty-six blocks here—“
”Oh, wow, you know what!” The lady gave an exaggerated glance down at her lap, pretending to read something important off of what was obviously just a fashion magazine. “I’m just realizing now, you guys are the…uh…ninety-ninth and hundredth people, respectively, to show up today! And you know what that means. Or actually you probably don’t, because we don’t advertise it anywhere—don’t want people gaming the system, ha ha—but the hundredth visitor to arrive every Friday gets their whole group in free for the day, here, have two wristbands on the house—pick your favorite colors…”
”You know, Harry,” Tom said with a smirk as they sauntered out to the edge of the pool, where the water beckoned crystal-blue in the sunlight, “when we get back to Hogwarts, the Hat may just want to re-sort you into Slytherin.”
”Shut up,” he retorted with an elbow to Tom’s ribs—although he couldn’t help thinking it would be quite fun to share a dorm, a common room, and all his classes with his newfound summer friend. “My aunt and uncle spent ten bloody years telling me my parents were useless drunks, I might as well get something out of that same lie…”
They spent the entire day in the water, racing laps and trying to dunk each other, Harry repeatedly climbing onto Tom’s broader shoulders until the lifeguard blew the whistle for “excessive horseplay”. Harry competed with himself to make the biggest cannonball, while Tom endeavored to dive into the water without any splash or sound at all. They stayed until their fingers shriveled to prunes and their lips went bluish, the last ones to leave as the shadows lengthened on the concrete.
*
Harry was wandering an exhibit in the Royal Air Force Museum one morning, wondering just where the new Nimbus Two Thousand broomstick Ron told him about would fall in the ranking of fastest flying objects, when he saw Tom rapidly approaching him through the crowd.
“We’ve been rumbled,” he hissed, grabbing Harry by the elbow and steering him toward the doorway, glancing around furtively like he had that first day on the Knight Bus. “The bloke at the front desk recognized us from the summer program, asked why we were here before the drop-off time at noon. I told him our parents brought us early but he wanted to call them to check, and I couldn’t put him off this time…”
”Bollocks!” Harry said under his breath, picking up his own pace. “What’s the plan then, where’re we going—“
”I gave him a fake number and came to find you, but by now he’s likely realized he’s just on the line with the local Pizza Express,” Tom said. “We have to get out of here and we can’t stay in any of the affiliated museums anymore, it’s too risky.”
Harry swore again, one of the colorful phrases he’d picked up from Tom. They still had three weeks left to go in August, and most of the shops and libraries they’d visited were too small to hide effectively in past closing time. He followed his friend to the exit; they both ducked down behind a group of tall tourists taking pictures when they saw several employees rushing by muttering urgently to each other, then dodged around the metal detectors (their wands and the magically shrunken trunks in their pockets tended to set them off) and outside, where they ran until they were out of sight of any of the grand marble buildings.
That first night they got another lucky break, running into a genuine, full-time adult vagabond in the park where they’d huddled in some bushes for shelter. The man seemed harmless enough, not triggering either of their well-honed instincts for danger, and his well-cared-for dog was another large mark in his plus column; so they sat and listened while he made them a provisional offer to share his squatting territory, in exchange for their help earning more generous donations. His terms were more than fair, requiring little of them but to sit around looking exactly like their skinny, disheveled selves, so they quickly spat and shook on it.
The next several days were spent loitering around next to their new friend on various pavements and street corners, holding a bowl and a cardboard sign with block letters reading WIDOWER FATHER OF TWO ANYTHING HELPS MAY GOD BLESS AND KEEP YOU, while their ersatz “father” played a selection of surprisingly catchy original tunes on a mouth organ and a tambourine. Harmonica Hal, as he preferred to be called, told them that kids were statistically proven to double the effectiveness of any attempt to tug on someone’s heartstrings or pursestrings, and that Harry and Tom more than bore that out; in fact, they’d helped him near triple his average daily intake from busking and begging. At night, the boys were enthusiastically welcomed to join him and his friends around their bin-fire, where they listened, rapt, to hours of epic hobo stories—some of which were hair-raising enough to alarm even the cynical Tom. Harry soon grew to love Hal’s dog, Aloysius—and was adored by the animal in return—so much that he became a little miffed that canines were not on Hogwarts’ approved-pet list. Between Ripper, Mrs. Norris, and Mrs. Figg’s clowder of cats he’d been exposed to a terribly biased sample of domestic mammals so far in his life, and this was the first time he’d truly understood the appeal of keeping a four-legged friend.
(Tom’s only comment on the matter was that Aloysius “smelled like dog”, and that snakes had the excellent benefit of not shedding fur everywhere.)
Unfortunately, Hal and his gang packed up and left the city at the end of the week, planning to pool their earnings for train fare to the countryside, where the competition for donations, odd jobs and sleeping places was rumored to be less stiff. Harry and Tom needed to stay in London and in close proximity to Kings Cross, so they said their reluctant (extremely reluctant, in the case of Harry and Aloysius) goodbyes. That night, their familiar squat in the park was taken over by a group of young punks, who believed that busking for money was a form of capitalist poison and that the streets were the only ‘school’ that could truly prepare a child for life in the modern hyper-globalist society.
”Now what?” Harry asked, looking a bit longingly at the bin-fires of other groups as he and Tom retreated to a rather chilly bench.
“Not sure yet.” Tom had been very offended at the punks’ lack of awe for his moneymaking talent, and still seemed a little out of sorts over it. “We really need somewhere to lie low for this last while, where no bloody busybody adults will come and ruin it for us again.”
Harry smiled slowly as another idea came to him. It was starting to happen more and more often now; perhaps a little bit of Slytherin, and Tom, really was rubbing off on him. “Well, I can think of one place where no one would think to look for kids in the summer…”
*
From September to June, about well as they could tell, King’s River Academy—a neat little brick-and-stone building just a few blocks from the Thames, at a convenient address roughly equidistant from three of the sort of leafy neighborhoods they’d “collected for charity” in—was a well-regarded Muggle secondary school, the kind of place where the city’s well-to-do middle class could expect their children to get a good education without paying truly eye-watering rates. For the final two weeks of August, though, it was Harry and Tom’s own personal kingdom, a perfectly deserted paradise where they could “lie low” in plain sight until the Hogwarts Express came to collect them once more.
One tight wriggle through a cracked window from Harry after a boost onto a second-story ledge from Tom’s shoulders, and they were in. There were roughly two dozen classrooms, a gymnasium and cafeteria, and most importantly: an infirmary with six real-live beds—just cots really, but the first chance they’d had to rest their heads on actual pillows in over a month. They slept like princes in the nurse’s office, then spent their days exploring—reading in the library, covering every blackboard with their scribblings and then having chalk-and-eraser fights more epic than any wizard’s duel, taking cold but luxurious showers afterwards in the boys’ locker rooms. The gym itself was equipped with all manner of balls, nets, hoops and other sporting paraphernalia, with which they created one-on-one versions of every game they could remember and several new ones of their own design, including an awkward, ground-bound approximation of Quidditch. A full band’s worth of instruments were stored in the music room, where Harry attempted to replicate songs by the Beatles, Harmonica Hal and the Weird Sisters alike until Tom pressed his hands over his ears and fled to the other end of the school, refusing to show his face again until Harry ran through the halls shouting apologies. He then emerged from a stairway, promptly got punched in the ribs by the annoyed younger boy, and later showed off the fantastic hiding place he’d found: an echoey basement with a huge, empty hole in the ground, probably a training pool when filled with water but excellent for games or forts in the meantime.
The cafeteria had enough frozen food leftover from the year before that every day could be pizza day, and no one else dictated where they were allowed to sit. In the second week, Tom somehow managed to boot up a single monitor in the computer lab, and Harry finally experienced the hypnotic power of Dudley’s favorite car-racing game; but he honestly much preferred the art room, where the two boys painted their favorite scenes from Hogwarts, the Fantastic Beasts textbook, or simply their own imaginations. In the drama department they found and donned sets of oversized and dusty but relatively clean clothes, which had been designed for costume plays but honestly wouldn’t look a bit out of place in Hogsmeade or Diagon, and it was enjoyable to go about in hats and robes and get used to feeling like real wizards again.
On the twenty-third, Harry woke to a persistent tapping on the infirmary window and leapt to his feet, expecting an interloper and gripping a sharp medical scissors he’d found for self-defense—but it was only a large barn owl, bearing one thick, creamy envelope with the Hogwarts crest for each of them. His was addressed:
Mr. Harry J. Potter
The infirmary at the end of the north hall
King’s River Academy, 341 Porter St.
Pimlico, London
Tom’s hands stilled as he opened his own, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at the elegant green script.
“You don’t suppose they check the addresses on these before they send them out, do you?” he asked. “They could find out we’ve been living on our own all summer, and come drag us back to our bloody guardians.”
“I’m pretty sure they don’t,” Harry said, trying to project confidence though he was concerned about the same thing. “My very first one was addressed to ‘the cupboard under the stairs’, and no one said anything about it.”
The other boy gave a thin, mean little smile. “Me neither, and mine had ‘the laundry room in the cellar’ on it, after the last time I ‘accidentally’ Vanished the stairs from under my foster father when he was chasing me.”
“Well, we’re guarding ourselves now.” He reached out and almost patted Tom’s arm, but chickened out and gave him a strange, awkward poke in the shoulder instead. Tom grunted in affirmation.
”Yes, and we’ll keep doing it too.” He turned back to his letter and flipped to the second page. “Salazar, what on earth is going on with all these Lockhart books? I saw a few of these titles when I was at Flourish and Blott’s last year, the covers looked an awful lot like fiction to me…”
*
Two days before the train was set to depart, Harry and Tom returned to the Leaky Cauldron, dressed for the occasion in some of the extra’s costumes from an old King’s River Academy production of Henry V. They were waved through without a second glance by the barman (also named Tom) and crossed to Diagon Alley, where they stopped by Gringotts and traded in their vouchers for the Needy Student Scholarship Fund before setting out to purchase their second-year supplies.
When they reached the bookshop, they discovered that Gilderoy Lockhart, the author of the required books that would eat up half their budget, was a.) present in the building, giving a reading and signing; b.) contracted to teach Defense for the coming year at Hogwarts, after Quirrell lost his voice choking on a garlic bulb last May; and, finally and worst of all, indeed a peddler of complete and utter fiction. His ‘reading’ was more of a dramatic reenactment, featuring walk-on performances by seven starstruck witches as victims of an evil vampire, a setting that kept shifting between Romania, Transylvania and Albania, and several ‘spells’ that, according to Tom’s increasingly incensed whispering, did not exist and were not even proper Latin.
“This is ridiculous,” the Slytherin fumed, his objections unheard over the awed gasps of the crowd. “He’s not a Defense master, he’s a fraud. I’m not spending a single Knut on that glorified toilet paper he calls his memoirs, let alone dozens of hours of my life sitting in a classroom listening to him.”
”Yeah, but…” Harry winced as Lockheart let out a long, tortured scream, imitating the vampire he claimed to have staked through the heart (in broad daylight, on what was either a bridge over a rushing river, a castle battlement over a moat filled with spikes, or a garden-variety crumbling cliff, he’d said all three at various points in his retelling). “What can we do about it?”
They looked at each other for a minute in silence, thinking on this problem; and then broke into matching grins, nearly as identical and ominous as Fred and George themselves, as they both realized that they did, in fact, know exactly what they were going to do.
*
Two hours later—when the chaos had died down and the Aurors had managed to (mostly) contain the stampede of panicked wixen through the Alley, with the bitten or trampled receiving treatment from Healers at hastily-erected medical tents—Harry and Tom sat sharing a mountainous hot-fudge sundae from Florean Fortescue, who was happy just to have a single paying customer left in the wake of the calamity. They had plenty of Galleons to spare for extra toppings, with the savings accrued from skipping the full set of Lockhart books.
Many of the patrons present a Flourish and Blott’s that day had made a similar decision—or even demanded full refunds for the autographed copies they’d only just purchased—after the author’s presentation was interrupted by a mass breakout of snakes from Smythers’ Serpent Sanctuary down by the entrance to Knockturn. The reptiles attacked in coordinated waves, as if given marching orders from some revered unseen general; and it soon became evident that the much-vaunted Defeater of the Dark could not even tell the difference between a Runespoor, an Ashwinder, and an Occamy, let alone whether said creatures were dangerously venomous. Lockhart had accidentally removed the bones and blood vessels of several badly poisoned fans, in a botched attempt to heal them—before taking a nasty hit from a pit viper he claimed was a harmless adder, screaming in falsetto as he watched his ankle swell to the size of a cantaloupe, and finally being Apparated out of the fray by his frantic assistants. Prophet reporters were already on the scene, interviewing bystanders.
”I, for one, will be sending a Howler—or several!—to the Hogwarts Board of Governors over Mr. Lockhart’s misbegotten appointment,” one Molly Weasley was quoted as saying in the eventual special evening edition of the paper. “I have five children still in school and I do not feel safe nor comfortable entrusting them to the care of a cowardly charlatan.”
”Heartily seconded,” said Lucius Malfoy, who had tripped and fallen when a cobra stole his silver cane and wound up sitting in the med tent next to the Weasley matriarch. “I have a seat on the Board myself, and will not countenance subpar education for my son and heir—who, you should also note down, is worth a half dozen Weasley spawn.”
“You were right, Tom,” Harry said happily, licking his spoon clean and then his fingers too for good measure. “Food really does always taste better when it’s bought with a day’s honest wages…d’you reckon I might still have enough gold left over for a new pair of Seeker’s gloves? I want to try out for the team this year.”
”Salazar, why would you want to waste your money on that?” Tom shook his head and raised his hand to chin level, allowing his own fingers to be cleaned by the forked tongue of the tiny, striped juvenile coral snake whose head had just poked out of his sleeve. “I’m going back to Smythers’ Sanctuary—I saw a fantastic self-heating terrarium that’s just the right size for my new friend here…”
*
On September 1st, two boys—plus one fast-growing snake in her terrarium, a snowy owl just returned from a glorious summer hunting and roaming free in the countryside, and two trunks recently restored to full size, their hidden corners still stuffed with packaged snacks fished from Muggle vending machines—stood on Platform 9 ¾, preparing to board the Hogwarts Express.
“Well, Har—Potter,” Tom corrected himself, with a wary glance at his well-dressed Slytherin yearmates who were just starting to arrive and come within earshot. His h’s and g’s were strongly enunciated again, Harry noticed, not a hint of Cockney in sight. He personally found Tom charming either way, though. “I think we would both agree that this summer has been a highly successful joint venture.”
He stuck out his hand; Harry took it gladly, and it was dry and warm and calloused as they shook, the blunt nails a little grown out and ragged from their two months without access to ordinary clippers. “Yeah, I’ll say…Riddle,” he said with a grin, mindful of Ron and his family also emerging through the barrier. “Er…same time, next summer, maybe?”
”Oh, definitely,” Tom said, sticking his hand back in his pocket but nodding so vigorously his perfectly-coiffed hair flopped down over his forehead again. “I’d be happy to repeat this little arrangement, once our second year is through. And, ah, perhaps…perhaps also…” He cleared his throat and darted his eyes from side to side again, as if still habitually on the lookout for busybody adults. “I mean, there’s no need to be strangers during the school year as well,” he said, with a casual shrug that Harry had come to know was anything but. “Slytherins and Gryffindors share several classes together. Merlin knows you could use help in Potions, and most of the pampered purebloods can’t keep up with me in Defense…”
”Yeah? Really?” Harry said, knowing he sounded a bit stupid but unable to keep the giddy smile off his face anyhow. “I’d like that! And you know…you know, I really am going to try out for reserve Seeker. You could come to a practice or two—get some intel on our strategy for your snake friends…”
”And then there’s winter hols, of course.” Their sentences were practically overlapping now. “We’re likely to be some of the only ones staying on at the castle, it might get awfully boring on our own. Last year the group was so small all the Houses ate at the same table, remember—“
”Oh yeah, totally. Even the professors, on Christmas Day.”
They nodded in tandem, staring into each other’s eyes for a long moment. Then he heard Ron’s familiar voice shout “Harry! There you are! Come over here, you won’t believe what happened when Ginny was buying books in Diagon…”
”Your fellow lions await,” Tom said loftily, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll leave you to the madhouse. See you around, Potter.”
But I’ll never forget we slept next to real lions in the museum together, Harry thought, but didn’t voice the silly notion aloud. Instead he just raised a hand and waved cheekily, even though they were still less than a meter apart. “See ya, Riddle. Can’t wait to throw some actual hexes at you in Defense!”
Then he turned and jogged away down the platform, preparing himself to hear Ron’s slightly-exaggerated first-person account of Lockhart and the Great Serpentine Humbling.
*
”Mr. Potter!”
Harry stopped and looked over his shoulder at the sound of his name, meeting the distinctive twinkling eyes and Fwooper-printed robes of Headmaster Dumbledore. He turned fully and waited for the old wizard to catch up to him, surprised to see him out of his office this early in the term.
”Yes, Headmaster?”
”I’m awfully glad to have run into you, Harry my dear boy,” said Dumbledore warmly. “I’ve been meaning to ask after you. You’re finding your second-year coursework manageable, I trust? No issues with the…slightly unpredictable Defense schedule?”
Beats the alternative we could’ve had, he sniggered internally. Lockhart had tendered his resignation by owl before the plates at the Welcome Feast were even cool, claiming a catastrophic and highly contagious spattergroit infection; Defense lessons had been conducted so far by a rotating cast of substitutes, possessed of varying skill and experience. Aloud, he only replied, “No, it’s been great. Defense is one of my favorite subjects this year, actually.” Thanks in big part to my new regular dueling partner.
“Good, good.” Dumbledore nodded in satisfaction, his long silver beard bobbing up and down. “And, oh, one more thing before I let you get back to your busy young life…” His expression turned a shade more serious, and Harry got the feeling he was about to broach the topic he’d really come here to discuss. “Did you…have a good summer, Harry, on the whole? I must confess our last conversation weighed on me slightly, after you departed at the end of June. I would be remiss if I didn’t…well…”
Did you ask Tom this, too? Harry wondered, genuinely curious. Or just me, because you knew my parents and they were in your House at school?
“It was brilliant.” The lie (and it wasn’t even a lie!) came easily now, after a summer of practice with a master of the craft. “One of the best I’ve ever had, probably.”
The elderly wizard’s face broke into a beaming—and more than a little relieved—smile, his eye-twinkle practically doubling in wattage. “Oh, my dear boy, that truly is excellent,” he said, reaching out and giving Harry a grandfatherly pat on the shoulder. “You see? I did tell you that maintaining strong ties to your Muggle heritage would be enriching—and that your relatives would come around, with time and further exposure to all the wonders of magic. Oh, I’m delighted to hear that indeed…”
After a few more pleasantries, the Headmaster made his excuses and continued up the hall, likely headed back to his office behind the gargoyle in the upper reaches of the castle. Harry watched him go, wondering if Tom really did have the right of it when he’d said old Bumblemore’s probably never met a Muggle in his life.
But he found that it didn’t matter quite so much to him anymore. With a little luck on his side, he’d never have to stay with his ‘relatives’ again—Same time, next summer—and he’d spent the past two months in the company of all kinds of Muggles that set a better, kinder example. Like the woman at the pool and the museum tour guides, and the group of ‘vagabonds’ that shared their earnings and their firelight, and even the harassed businessmen who’d grudgingly given money to two urchins attacking their shoes. The people who really had donated to the cause of healthy meals for needy orphans, in an even more direct way than they’d thought.
He turned and headed for exit to the grounds, a square of bright light spilling through the open double doors. Ron wanted to squeeze in one more Quidditch practice together before tryouts this weekend, and later maybe he and Tom could compare their Potions notes down by the lake. It was mid-September now, close to the equinox. He wanted to soak up the very last of the lingering summer sunshine, before the leaves once again began to fall.