Chapter 2: Diagon Alley and the Sorting

The man from the Ministry arrived in a black coat that had been brushed to within an inch of its life. He had a sharp profile and a briefcase that snapped shut on the first try. It suggested a habit of things going the way he preferred. Tom watched him from the foot of the orphanage stairs, hands in his pockets, eyes steady under the fringe Mrs Cole had cut with her sewing scissors on the kitchen table.

“Mr Riddle,” the man said. He held himself to the last rung as if any further descent might lower him in more than height. “Prendergast. Department of Magical Education.”

He pronounced each word as if it were a card laid precisely on a green baize table.

Tom did not offer a hand. “You aren’t the professor,” he said.

Prendergast’s eyebrows rose the smallest fraction. “No.”

The faintest scent of pomade hung from him, something clean and sharp. There was no warmth to it. A closed smell. Tom slid a look at Mrs Cole, who hovered a few paces behind Prendergast, her mouth folded as tightly as the Ministry man’s briefcase. She held out a brown paper packet with the smallness of something she had wrapped herself.

“You’ll need the money,” she said. “And behave.”

Tom took the packet and the words as though they were objects offered and put away with equal care. “I always do,” he said.

Prendergast’s gaze shifted to the peeling banister, the scuffed edges of the stairs, the boot rack with one pair of boots with holes in both soles. “We should be off,” he said. “There is a deal to be done before shops close.”

As they went into the street, Mrs Cole called, “Don’t get clever, Tom,” but it came out thin and watery in the morning air. He let the door close behind him without answering. The latch clicked; he felt it like a tick against the skin of his back.

Prendergast kept a brisk pace, as if the pavement were a moving walkway and he had learned to move just faster than it. He did not look at Tom, which suited Tom well enough. They took a bus—Prendergast demonstrated the coins as if Tom had never seen money before—then they walked; they went by two sooty bookshops, a bakery where the first loaves of the day were still steaming and the smell clung to Tom’s throat like a longing, and on to a narrow street with a sign creaking above a doorway: The Leaky Cauldron.

It was the sort of place that tried to disappear even in broad daylight. Most people seemed not to see it. One fat man in a bowler hat peered right through the sign and hurried by, his newspaper under his arm, the word Crisis blaring in black under his elbow. Prendergast opened the door and went in without glancing back, assuming Tom would follow.

Inside it was dim and brown and full of low voices. An old woman with a face like dried fruit hobbled past carrying a plate of kidneys swimming in a greyish sauce; a cat lay laid out like a rug on the hearth, motionless but for a tail that twitched with the laziness of something that had never had to work for affection. The air smelt of tobacco and spilled ale and something herbal that made Tom think of when Mrs Cole boiled nettles to stretch soup. He kept his face even and watched from the corners of his eyes.

Prendergast crossed to the back with the assurance of someone whose day was composed of corridors and doors other people did not know existed. He took out his wand. It was a smooth length of dark wood with no ornament. He counted bricks over the dustbin and tapped three in a row. The bricks shivered, then folded, and the wall opened like a mouth.

Tom did not move; he looked. Sunlight poured through the gap, bright as coins. The smell changed—parchment, something sweet burning, the sharp clean of newly polished broom wood. He stepped through.

Diagon Alley turned and climbed away in a curve that made it seem larger than it was. Shop windows flashed with objects that pressed against the panes: hovering cauldrons, rotating silver instruments, owls whose eyes opened and shut. People in robes flowed along like a river; some wore colours so rich Tom found himself taking them in with his mouth slightly open before he fixed his jaw.

“There,” Prendergast said, as if laying out chess moves. “First Gringotts. Then robes. Then books. Then wand, if Mr Ollivander is in a tolerable temper. We shall be swift.”

They went up the street past a family with three small boys who all had hair the colour of new straw and identical faces lit with the same gormless grin. Their mother fished a purse out of a reticule and counted coins that flashed gold and red in her hand; each coin seemed to weigh more than money Mrs Cole knew. When Tom’s gaze flicked to the coin, the woman’s gaze flicked to him. He found politeness and then looked away, but she had already placed him, he could feel it: clothes carefully brushed but not fresh, shoes polished to the last inch of ability, an air of watchfulness that did not belong to children led from shop to shop by indulgent hands. He adjusted his mouth to neutral and kept walking. The boys stopped, gawping past him at something else, and the mother did not speak to him, but he felt the moment lodge; he favoured the feeling for later.

Gringotts stood at the bend where the street rose. It had white pillars and a door with polished brass, and goblins in scarlet and gold who looked at Tom with bright assessing eyes that missed nothing. He liked them at once for that. He held the goblin’s gaze when Prendergast gave his name, and in return received a little nod that felt like being handed a card with his name and something else printed on it in small letters.

“A school bursary,” Prendergast said, when the goblin slid a small pouch across the counter. “Mrs Cole has filled in the relevant forms, I see. The school letters are useful things. Do not waste this. There is no appetite for excess.”

Tom weighed the pouch in his hand. The weight was honest, different from the rustle of paper Mrs Cole dealt in. He loosened the strings with idle fingers and glanced in. He counted without moving his lips: one, two, three galleons, a handful of smaller coins that flashed like the fish the boy from room four had brought back from the canal last spring. He tightened the strings and slipped the pouch into an inner pocket and double-checked the pocket’s fastening with a small rub of forefinger and thumb. Prendergast watched from the corner of his eye and gave nothing away.

At Madam Malkin’s a soft-voiced witch in mauve measured him without comment on the patched sleeve Mrs Cole had darned the week before with thread that did not quite match. Tom stood on a stool and glanced into the mirror where his own face looked back at him, narrow and white and composed. The witch’s pins flashed around him. On the next stool a boy with a neat parting and a pinched mouth stood with his chin lifted as if smelling something sour. His mother murmured in his ear and glanced at Tom’s shoes. The boy glanced because she had. Tom’s stomach had the slow, hot twist it had when other boys in the orphanage whispered in corridors and tried to give him a name he did not fancy. He did not move. When Madam Malkin’s assistant brought out a set of second-hand robes, carefully pressed, he turned the cloth between his fingers and said, “How much?”

“For the full set,” the assistant said. She quoted two prices, the lower after Prendergast produced a card from the depth of his briefcase with the movement of a magician.

The man did not look at Tom when he said, “Within your allowance.”

Tom inclined his head the smallest amount to make it a courtesy or a refusal. “I can make them last,” he said.

“I imagine you can,” Prendergast said.

They stopped at Flourish and Blotts and bought books that smelt of glue and the promise of other people’s thoughts. Tom took in the spines: magical theory, transfiguration, the history of a world Mrs Cole had never guessed at even as witches had no doubt walked past her on the pavement, chins tucked, slipping between sight and not-sight. Tom ran his thumb along the title of a volume that had no picture and no gilt; it was heavy and its weight pleased him. Prendergast paid for the set the school required and did not move when Tom hovered for a moment beside a shelf of miscellany where a narrow book with a dark cover rested with a quiet presence that did not shout its own name. Tom’s hand reached and then stilled. He moved away.

At the apothecary the air was sticky with smells that stuck to the back of his throat: old herbs in bags, piles of roots like knuckles, jars with pickled things that watched blindly, oils that cut through rot. A bell tinkled when they came in. The woman behind the counter handed him a brass set of scales and weights and a clever little knife for cutting. He tested the knife against his thumb and smiled. She did not smile back. She said, “Mind you don’t take more than you need,” and slid the knife back into its paper with a neat fold of her fingers.

Outside Ollivanders the window showed a single wand on a faded purple cushion. The box beneath it had a tag hand-written in a precise and spidery hand: Since 382 B.C. Tom paused.

Prendergast watched the pause. “I shall leave you to this,” he said. “Your schedule will be forwarded to the orphanage. There is a list of required items in your trunk. If you encounter any difficulty with Muggle authorities, speak to the Leaky Cauldron. The owner is in receipt of a stipend for such troubles.”

Tom turned his face to Prendergast. The sunlight made a thin edge along the man’s cheek. “The professor did not think it necessary to come,” he said. He kept his voice flat, holding the looseness of something that looked like acceptance.

“Professor Dippet is engaged with the forthcoming term,” Prendergast said. He set his briefcase carefully at his feet and glanced at his watch. “And Professor Dumbledore is engaged elsewhere.”

Tom felt something settle in him very quietly, like silt at the bottom of a glass. He did not look away. “I shall not trouble them,” he said.

“No,” Prendergast said. “You never do. Good day.”

He walked away without offering a hand or a good-luck. Tom watched the neat back recede, the black coat cutting a thin line through the crowd. A witch turned sideways to avoid Prendergast, and he did not slow. Tom’s mouth tightened; he let it go; he pushed open the door to Ollivanders.

It smelt of dust and polish and time. The narrow place was crammed with wands in boxes that leaned at angles that should have sent them all sliding. They did not. The quiet in the shop had a listening quality.

“Good afternoon,” said a voice like pages turning. A pale man with wide eyes that did not blink as often as Tom expected came out from behind a ladder. His hair was the colour of cobwebs and stood in a cloud that did not notice gravity. He looked at Tom’s face and then directly at Tom’s eyes as if measuring something that was behind them. Tom held steady. “Ollivander,” the man said, though Tom knew it already. “You must be—”

“Tom Riddle,” Tom said, not to save him the trouble, but because he preferred to give his name himself. “Eleven. First year. September.”

“Of course,” Ollivander said. He turned without asking and moved off between the stacks, his fingers hovering over the boxes like something dowsing for water. A tape measure leapt out of nowhere and began inching itself along Tom’s arm. “Wand arm?”

“Right,” Tom said. The tape gave his wrist a brisk little hug and darted up to his shoulder as if to check.

“Height,” Ollivander said. The tape drooped, then sprang. “And between nostrils—no, no, that was a joke,” he added, and his mouth made a dry little shape that might have been a smile. “No, it wasn’t. Hold still.”

Tom stood as the tape slid around him, under his arm, across the small where the ribs ended, and down to the floor. He kept his hands loose and let his fingers brush the counter. Dust rose, glittering.

Ollivander’s hand returned with a box, and another, and another. “Alder, ten inches, swishy,” he said, handing one over. “Excellent for charm work.”

Tom took it. He lifted his chin by a fraction and gave a small half-turn of his wrist the way he had seen in the window. The wand sat in his hand like a spoon. The air did not change. A single spark—if it was a spark—crept from the tip, half-hearted, and died unheard. Tom placed the wand on the counter without being told to try again.

“Hmm. No,” Ollivander said, as if Tom had answered a question. “Willow, nine inches, pliant.”

It felt vaguely damp, as if it had been left near a pane in rain. Tom swished it. The tape that had been measuring his ear drooped and thudded to the floor, like a cat deprived of amusement. He raised his eyebrow. Ollivander’s mouth twitched in what might have been interest.

“Not willow,” he said. He whisked the wand away. “Hornbeam, thirteen inches, hard, a good wand for those who set themselves a single pursuit and pursue it.”

Tom took it. A warmth stirred in his palm, and he felt the interest strike and hold: single pursuit. He lifted his arm. The wand jerked in his hand with a swift, stiff refusal, as if it were a horse he did not own. A brittle crack sounded from a high shelf. Tom lowered the wand very carefully. Something toppled somewhere and stopped itself from falling at the last fraction of a second. Ollivander’s eyes widened, and he looked at Tom’s hand.

“Not hornbeam,” he said, almost to himself. “Interesting. Cherry? No. Not cherry. Ebony? No, that would be... let us see.”

He went up the ladder like a spider, quick and precise. Boxes slipped into his hands and down into Tom’s. The next wand—ash, twelve inches, not flexible—spat sparks like a wet match and singed the edge of one box. The next—hawthorn, eleven inches—had a pleasant balance that made Tom’s wrist co-operate without effort, and for a second he thought the air cleared. He slashed it. The air popped, and every box on the lower shelf to his left leapt an inch. A snowfall of dust shook loose from the rafters and drifted down like a decision reversing itself. Ollivander flapped one hand, quieting the air.

“Not that either,” Ollivander said, more to the room than to Tom. His eyes were very bright. He lifted one more box from the far corner, looked at it, hesitated, then brought it back. “Here,” he said, and his voice had altered in a way Tom did not like. The box had more dust on it than the others, as if it had sat without being disturbed for longer. “Yew,” said Ollivander softly. “Thirteen and a half inches. Rather—” He stopped himself. He offered the wand.

Tom reached. The moment his fingers closed on it, warmth flooded where skin met wood—a deep warmth that ran along his arm like something unwinding. He lifted the wand and drew it through the air, and red-gold sparks fountained from the tip in a clean arc that made the dust glitter like stars.

For a moment there was a silence that had weight.

"Curious," Ollivander breathed. "Curious... very curious."

Tom turned his head a fraction. "What is curious?" He asked calmly, as if it did not matter. His fingers tightened on the wand.

Ollivander’s pale eyes flicked up to meet Tom’s and then slid to the wand. His mouth made a thin, almost-closed shape. “We shall see,” he said. “The wand chooses the wizard, Mr Riddle. That is all that matters.”

Tom held the wand up. The light along its length seemed to gather by the tip and stand there, like breath held. He lowered it. “Then it made an excellent choice,” he said.

“Yes,” Ollivander said, faintly. “Yes. Well.” He glanced at the ledgers, at a quill that began writing Tom’s name of its own accord, as if to save time. “That will be seven galleons.”

Tom counted the coins out of his pouch one by one and set them in a neat stack. The weight left his pocket and he felt it at once. He slid the wand back into its box, then held it again, then put it away with deliberate care. He left the shop without looking back at Ollivander. Outside, the alley had adopted a late afternoon brightness that pressed at his eyes. He drew the box closer to his side, as if he were carrying a quiet animal.

On the morning of the train, Mrs Cole fussed over his trunk as if tidying could make a case look like it had always belonged to a boy with someone waiting for him on a platform. It did not. She slot a stale biscuit in the outer pocket and patted it. “For the journey,” she said. Her eyes went to the wand box and then away with the same movement every time. She said, “Write. If you think of it.”

He put his case on the trolley and pushed out into the street. He did not look back.

King’s Cross was all noise and steam and the smell of coal, a smell that got in the mouth and stayed there, making everything else taste of it. Announcements ratcheted over the platform; porters shouted; a man in a hat shouted for someone called Derek; a woman cried and told a boy not to miss his meals. Tom looked at the clock, the spoked hands, the leaning shadows under people’s eyes. He could hear laughter from a group near the wall between platforms nine and ten; he adjusted his grip on the trolley and pushed without hesitation. It was like stepping into a breath held too long and then let go. He came out into brightness.

The scarlet engine glowed in its own steam. Owls hooted and a toad croaked from somewhere low down. Boys in their first-year faces stood to be told things and nodded and did not listen. A girl cried, then stamped and pretended she was angry not because she would miss anyone but because her hat had fallen off. Tom moved through them and up the steps into the corridor of the train. A carriage door slid; muffled laughter, a shout, a bang of a trunk lid. He passed one compartment, then another, looking for a place that was neither too full nor entirely empty. A compromise he would always prefer.

He slid open a door near the end. Two boys were already there. One had pale hair so fair it was almost white. He sat in the corner as if the seat had been designed for him, knees angled, hands in his lap, hat already stowed in the rack, tie neat, every line of him placed. The other was darker and looser, with a face that would have become handsome when he stopped being pleased with himself. They had trunks with names painted in gilded letters. The pale boy’s trunk said A. M. in a discreet font. A badge was pinned to the handle: the coil of a silver serpent over emerald enamel.

The pale boy looked up with cool courtesy. “Full?” he asked, as if inviting an answer that suited him.

Tom put his case under the seat and sat down. “It is now,” he said. He set his hat on the rack without looking to see if the space belonged to anyone else. He did not smile.

The darker boy grinned. “I’m Avery,” he said. “This is Abraxas. That’s Nott,” he added, tipping his chin towards a thin boy at the window who had not turned when Tom came in. Nott was drawing with his finger on the fogged glass and then wiping it with his sleeve, making something show and disappear, show and disappear.

“Tom Riddle,” Tom said.

“Riddle,” Abraxas said, trying the name as if testing a vintage. “Your people?” He asked it lightly, a neutral enquiry after a place on a map. His eyes took in Tom’s robes, neat and plain; the worn brass on the corner of the trunk from one too many journeys with fewer hands than needed to carry it; the polish on the shoes, too careful.

“I do not have any,” Tom said. He said it lightly also, turning the word have into something that did not require pity.

Avery blew out a breath that might have been a laugh, then saw Abraxas’s face and turned it into a cough. “Oh. Sorry.”

Abraxas’s mouth did something that might have been an apology if he were sorry about anything. He inclined his head the smallest amount and smiled to show he knew where the edge of courtesy lay. “Ah,” he said. “I see. Well. Hogwarts improves anyone.”

Nott did not turn, but the tracing on the window changed direction.

Tom let his fingers rest on the ridge of his wand box. “It is already an improvement,” he said. “I can make things happen there without breaking anyone’s crockery.”

Avery gave a shout of laughter at that. “Excellent,” he said. “We could do with fewer of the crockery sort. Abraxas’s aunt breaks crockery by glancing at it.”

Abraxas smiled without humour and rested one hand on his knee. “Your father was a Riddle,” he said, not a question but a measurement. “And your mother?”

Tom looked at the field of steam beyond the window. “I never knew her,” he said. He felt the small movement of his jaw. “She died.”

Abraxas shifted the angle of his chin. “It happens,” he said, and the words were offered as if they might level something uneven between them.

Nott turned his head the smallest amount, no more than what was required to make one eye visible. “What did your father do?” he asked. His voice was dry, less interested in the answer than in Tom’s way of answering.

Tom considered. “He left.”

“Left what?” Avery said. He leaned forward, eager on his own behalf.

“Her,” Tom said. “Us. Whatever word you like.” His voice did not move. “I grew up in a place where people leave when they can. It teaches you to be quick.”

Abraxas’s eyes flicked down. “Quick is useful,” he said. He tugged his cuff a fraction so that his wrist showed the gold of a watch-chain. “What House?” He said it as if it were more of a decision than it was. “We shall all be Slytherin, obviously.” He glanced at Nott, who did not contradict him. “My family has always been Slytherin. Avery’s too. Nott—”

“—always,” Nott said. He wiped the glass with his sleeve again. The condensation smeared, then cleared. “Is there another option?” He said it as if there were not.

Tom watched his fingers on the wand box. He smoothed the wood with the tips, feeling the grain rise and run. “If the choice exists,” he said, and let the words hang with the shape of amusement without actually being amused. “I have always thought people make the choices that suit them.”

Avery laughed again because laughter was what he had; he enjoyed his own jokes and the possibility of other people’s. “Listen to him,” he said. “We’ll have a philosopher on our hands.”

Abraxas looked out at the blur of London falling back into itself as the train gathered speed. “You’ll find,” he said, “that a certain... background is helpful. Knowing people. Being known. It spares one some inconveniences.”

“Is that what you call them,” Tom said, not as a question, and lifted his head as if to see the names on the invisible doors he meant to open.

Abraxas tilted his head a fraction, appraising. “What I call them is customary,” he said. “One should always be customary in public. It keeps the wrong sort from thinking they can get in.”

Tom folded his hands where Abraxas could see they did not tremble. “A door is still a door,” he said. “It opens.”

“In the proper direction,” Abraxas said. He smiled, and there was all the politeness in the world in it. “We shall see.”

They spoke then of the classes the booklist suggested and of brooms Tom did not own and of Quidditch teams with the names of men whose portraits no doubt hung in halls Tom had never set foot in. When the trolley came by with pumpkin pasties and licorice wands and small tins of sweets that fizzed on your tongue, Abraxas bought a selection without looking at the prices, and Avery took what he liked, and Nott refused everything as if it were a test he had already passed. Tom counted the coins in his head and bought one pasty. He ate it slowly. When he was finished he folded the paper neatly and put it in his pocket not because he was keeping it but because he disliked leaving anything of his for someone else to claim.

By the time the countryside had sloped itself into forest and the afternoon light had turned to the colour of iron, they had all agreed in their minds how the evening would go. They would be Sorted; they would sleep where their parents had slept; their names would stitch themselves into the fabric of the House like gold thread; they would carry themselves accordingly. Tom watched their certainty live in them, warm as breath on a cold day. He did not breathe it in.

Hogwarts rose out of the dark like a memory. The carriages at the station stood waiting, their lanterns flaring and fading with their own timing. He saw the creatures at their heads and did not comment; he saw other children not seeing and marked it away as yet another way in which seeing mattered more than being shown. He did not look for boats and did not get one. He stepped into a carriage without waiting to be invited. Abraxas followed; they arranged themselves on the green leather with the ease of boys who had never stood in a doorway waiting for someone to say now.

In the Great Hall, the candles hung like stars, and the ceiling held a sky that had nothing to do with the sky outside. The smell was roasted meat and hot gravy and new bread and the faint iron tang of long-used stone. Tom’s mouth filled with the desire to swallow that had nothing to do with hunger. He stood among the first-years, not at their front, not at their back. They pushed and craned; he kept his hands by his sides and watched the older pupils at the tables glance up and glance away and glance up again at the name read out that meant something to them. The list of names went on. There were murmurs at some; once a cheer; a low snigger at one boy with a run of p’s in his surname; a shifting, like a stirred pool, at an old family name that seemed to be a password to something or other. Tom’s neck prickled under the collar he had pressed with the back of a spoon to make it sharp.

“Riddle, Tom,” said a crisp voice from the front.

He let the sound of it run along his spine and down into his shoes, into the soles that had been damp that morning and were now dry with travel dust. He walked up, measured and quiet, and sat on the stool. The hat came down over his eyes and the hall disappeared.

It was not a voice at first. It was a texture, a slow sift of thought like fingers going through a box of mixed buttons. When the voice came, it came as if he had produced it by thinking in a certain direction.

Well, well, said the voice, not in his ear but behind his own sense of where sound should be. What have we here. Clever, no doubt of that. And a flavour of something else. Ambition... yes. Resourceful. And—oh, my. There’s more. Daring.

Tom sat straight. He did not clench his hands.

Courage, the hat said with a dry chuckle. How surprising. You would not have guessed, would you. But then—you have always moved towards danger, not away. You like it when your heart beats too hard. You like not knowing. You like to make the unknown knowable.

You can put me where you like, Tom thought, keeping his thoughts as smooth as the surface of a lake when the wind stops, but you must account for what I am.

Must I, the hat said, amused. Boys do not often instruct me in my business.

You said daring, Tom thought. You said resourceful. You said ambition. If you send me among those who call courage a virtue when they are afraid, I will not learn anything.

You might learn restraint, the hat said softly. You might learn that doing a thing because your blood runs faster when you do it is not the same as doing a thing because it needs doing. There is plenty you might learn in—how shall I put it—different company. Gryffindor would stretch you.

Tom’s mouth twitched.

Besides, the hat went on in a tone that would have been a hand laid on his shoulder if there had been a hand, you care, whether you admit it or not, for something outside yourself. For justice, perhaps. For balance. No, do not jerk away; I feel it. You would take a beating for an idea if it were yours. You would go into a fire if it meant not being left out of the burning.

I would not be left, Tom thought, and it came out hard. His fingers pressed against the edge of the stool under the robes. I would not be left ever again.

Ah, the hat said softly. He sounded old then. Poor child. He sounded sorry, and Tom hated him for it.

He stiffened. He made his mind a flat surface. I can make things happen, he thought. The words had edges.

Yes, said the hat. You can. And you will. But consider this: there are many kinds of making. In Gryffindor, you would be challenged by those who do not care for your tricks. You would have to show them in other methods. You might become... different. In Slytherin, you will be fed what you already have an appetite for. You will be strengthened where you are already strong. It will be easier.

Easy is not the point, Tom thought. Control is.

Oh, said the hat. And that is what you will have in Slytherin?

I shall take it, Tom thought.

The hat was silent for a long moment. He could feel it like weather settling. You would do well in Gryffindor, it said at last. Very well. There is bravery in you that you hide even from yourself. There is a taste for risk that does not care if anyone calls it noble. You want the front of the line because that is where the view is clear. You could be great there, but a different kind of great.

Tom’s jaw tightened. He made himself breathe.

And yet, the hat said, and the voice deepened as if going down stairs, there is no use pretending. You are self-preserving, you are clever beyond your years, you calculate cold and hot, you watch, you wait, you strike; you will not be told no by the sort of boys who nod and go on eating. You will gather power as other boys gather stamps. You will make use of it. Very well. All right. It must be—Slytherin!

The last word echoed not in his head but in the Hall, a roar that came in through the hat’s brim and down into his bones. He pulled the hat off quickly and slid off the stool. The Slytherin table was a dark, glossy stripe down the right-hand side of the hall. Abraxas stood and clapped with a smile that showed nothing but teeth. Nott thumped the table once. Avery whooped, because he did not know a thing about edges. Tom walked to them and allowed his mouth to lift in a small line. He sat beside Abraxas.

“Welcome,” Abraxas said. He slid a plate towards Tom as if placing a marker on a board. “Your place.”

Tom placed his hands on either side of the plate and did not touch the food immediately. He felt the warmth of the roast rising against his wrists. A swell of talk rolled through the hall as more names were called and more choices made. He reached for the gravy and poured it out in a thin stream that did not splash. He cut bread. He ate as if he had been taught to, though he had not. He kept his eyes up and did not stare.

He watched the Head Table. Men with beards and women with severe chignons and one man whose eyes never seemed to be looking at the same place as his head. Somewhere near the middle a professor with auburn hair spoke to his neighbour and lifted a goblet and set it down again. He did not look down at Tom. Tom looked at him, his mouth holding a line that could be nothing or a mark.

“I shall introduce you to Professor Slughorn,” Abraxas said, in the tone of someone bestowing something. “He collects. You may be of interest.”

“To be collected is a form of captivity,” Tom said.

“It is a form of safety,” Abraxas said. He raised his goblet. “For some.”

Later, the older boy with the slug-coloured moustache that had an unfortunate ripeness about it—a prefect, the badge flashing—led the Slytherins down into the dungeons. The air changed. It cooled and smelt of stone that had been wet and dried many times and kept a memory of both. Torches fixed to walls burned low and greenish, as if they had learned something from what lay on the other side of the stone. They came into a room with a long black chimney that breathed more than smoked. The light came from lamps that seemed to float under the surface of a black lake behind the windows. The lake pressed at the glass like a creature. Tom stood for a moment and looked at the wavering shadows of weeds and the occasional slow drift of something that might have been the pale belly of a fish. He felt the cold lay along his forearms and did not pull his sleeves down.

“This way,” said the prefect. He opened a door; the hinges sighed in a friendly manner. “First-years on the right—boys through there, girls through there.”

The dormitory had six beds with green hangings and trunks at the foot of each. A narrow window set in a deep embrasure showed the lake like an eye. The boy with the unfortunate moustache pointed. “Take whichever,” he said. “No shouting after lights-out. You’ll find hot water through there. Do not leave your socks by the fire. There are creatures in the lake that like socks. You will not get them back. Any questions?”

Avery laughed. “Do the creatures shine if you feed them the right thing?” he said.

“No,” the prefect said, bored. “No one cares for your shining.”

He left. The door swung shut with a soft buff of air.

Abraxas took the bed nearest the window as if to make a point; he did it with no noise. Avery threw himself onto the bed opposite it and bounced twice. Nott set his trunk down with a small click and began to unpack slowly, folding each item the same way. Tom stood in the middle of the room with his trunk. He chose a bed not near anyone and not far. He set his trunk at its foot. He opened it and took out his things one by one. He laid the wand box on the pillow, then slid the wand out, then in. He folded his robes and put them away; he placed his books together with their spines aligned; he slid his shoes under the bed to where he could hook them with his toe without bending. He took the biscuit Mrs Cole had pushed into the pocket and placed it on the lid of his trunk. He disliked the idea of waking in the night and wanting anything.

Abraxas drew his hangings back with a small flick. “Slughorn will throw a supper,” he said. “He always does for those he thinks promising. It is nothing to worry about. One goes, one eats, one says the right names. He has photographs.”

“Of whom?” Avery asked, hauling his tie over the bedpost like a flag.

“Everyone he ever liked,” Nott said without interest. He put a pair of socks in the top drawer and shut it. “Don’t look them in the eye; they take it as encouragement.”

Abraxas smiled. “You will be used to that, Riddle,” he said. “From your orphanage.”

Tom looked up. “What,” he said softly, “would you know of my orphanage.”

Abraxas’s eyebrows rose a fraction at the tone. “Nothing,” he said, pleasantly. “That is my point.”

Nott’s mouth twitched. “Do not let him rattle you,” he said, without looking up. “He rattles people for a living.”

“I do not,” Abraxas said, gazing at his reflection in the window’s black oval. “I dress them and place them.”

Avery laughed again because it was habit. He lay back and flung an arm over his eyes. “I’m going to sleep until someone brings me breakfast.”

“No one will bring you breakfast,” Nott said. “You are not at home.”

Tom ran his fingers along the wand as if smoothing down bristles. The wood was still warm; or his hand was. He laced his fingers and set both hands on his knees and sat for a moment without moving. The dormitory filled with the small noises boys make when they have placed themselves: the settling of springs under weight, a breath let out after holding, the crackle of a piece of paper folded and put away, the soft thud of a book landing on a floor in its cover. Outside, something brushed the window with a pale arm where there should have been no arm; Tom stared until it drifted past and was only a smear of light broken by weeds.

He undressed and slid into the bed and pulled the hangings close. The green cloth smelt of age and a faint odour of dust that had once been someone’s hair. He tucked the wand under the pillow, his fingers on it as if he were laying a hand on a pet that might run away. He lay on his back and did not close his eyes for a long time. Voices went on beyond the hangings and stopped. Someone snored, then turned, then stopped. The lake made a constant small sound like distant weaving.

He had thought, on the train if not before, of walking into a place and having the place notice with a particular quickness. Not adoration. Not even welcome. But an acknowledgement, sharp and brief, of a difference they could not name. Abraxas had looked, but he had not seen, not really. The hat had seen; he could feel the thoughts of it on his skull like the memory of touch. He turned his head on the pillow and pressed his cheek to the cool cotton. He told himself he had got what he wanted. A wand that warmed to his hand and obeyed the lean of his wrist; the table that mouthed his name; a House where those who thought they had the right to anything collected themselves. He had been placed at the right angle to the door.

He lay there and listened and thought of the wall of the Leaky Cauldron folding and of the smell just beyond it and of the man with the neat briefcase. He rolled onto his side and tucked his hands under the pillow and closed them around the wand as if holding the hilt of a knife while a house slept. The hanging stirred a little as if something moved the air outside. He did not sleep quickly.

When he did, at last, his mouth had the straight line it had when he walked in places he had never walked before and did not show he wanted anything from them. He slept with his face to the stone wall and his back to the room as if, at any moment, he might be called to get up and go, and he would be ready.