Chapter 7: The Gaunt Trail

By March the library had grown narrower about him. The stacks drew in, as if the oak uprights leaned closer to listen. Dust hung glittering in the slant of cold light from the mullioned windows; every footfall was a whisper. Tom sat with his back to a column, a thin pile of volumes arranged with ordinary care that did not match the accuracy of his arrangement. A browned quenched-ink smell spilled from the pages.

He turned a leaf as if it might squeal if he were careless. The book was half-falling to pieces, its spine crazed like old paint. Magical Genealogy of Rural Wizarding Families had been bound in dragonhide once; now it showed scuffed edges and the faint gleam of scales under cracked varnish. He had started the morning with a list and no names. He had narrowed to names and not enough proof. Riddle. Gaunt. Slytherin. There were lines between them; he could feel the lines as surely as if they were cords tightening around his fingers, drawing him forward.

“Mind the glue on that one,” said the librarian in a severe whisper that rasped like parchment. She hovered at the end of the aisle, spectacles low on her nose; she watched his hands rather than his face. “The binding is a century old.”

“It will hold,” said Tom. His tone was mild. He did not look up. He kept his fingertips precisely on the corners, turned the page soundlessly.

He had learned early that authority found nothing so suspicious as stillness. A boy intent on his work offended no one. A boy flying under ceilings during lunch invited every eye. He had chosen early. The library was gratitude itself. It gave him paper and pens and time. It gave him the slow satisfaction of text unravelled; it gave him years that did not exist and places he could walk in without paying anyone.

Today it owed him a name.

Lines of stiff ink marched down the page, recording marriages and burials. The Gaunt family appeared first in the twelfth century entry—boasting with a sort of antiquated sneer—then thinned, a tapering wick. There were unhelpful lacunae. The scribe had used a fine hand; Tom traced his gaze along the elegant sprawl of letters, tasting them. Marvolo. Morfin. Merope. A handful of entries swallowed by a column of crossed-out names, a note in the margin in a later hand: Last branch dwindled in the north. Location uncertain.

Uncertain was not a word he tolerated.

He closed the book gently, slid it under the next, and set the next on top of the stack so that the librarian could see the orderliness. He drew a finger under the spine and levered it to the light. Department of Magical Law Enforcement: Annual Report, 1896–1922. The cover hesitated as if reluctant to yield, then parted with the faintest tearing sound. He settled his jaw and kept the sound behind his teeth. A boy who lost his book temper could be the boy who broke a book.

There it was, under “Rural Incidents—Storm-afflicted Counties.” An item the size of his thumb joint:

“Complaint received regarding offensive hexes cast by Morfin Gaunt upon a local Muggle in the district of Little Hangleton. Ministry official visited. Temporary suspension of wand privileges. An heirloom ring seized and later returned to Mr Marvolo Gaunt upon conclusion of investigative measures.”

Tom’s eyes returned to the words “Little Hangleton”. They sat dull as coal. The paper had not known what it recorded.

He set his pen to the margin with the smallest sound and copied the words into his notes slowly, to make the ink deepen. Little Hangleton. He copied it twice, the loops identical. He wrote “ring” and underlined it once. He waited until his hand no longer wanted to underline it again.

Little Hangleton. The name lay in his pocket now. It anchored the floating ends of a net he had been casting for months and drew it tight. He sat back; the wood of the chair creaked. He straightened the pile of volumes until the corners lined.

“May I see your slip,” said the librarian. She had drifted within arm’s reach without sound and stood with one hand out. Her lips held a thin, pinched firmness, but her gaze combed the table with a thorough attention he admired, faintly. “For the Annual Report. Restricted circulation on anything less than twenty-five years.”

Tom had known she would come. He had noted the hour and the way she lingered over stamps when he arrived. He slid out the slip he had already filled; the name of the report and its dates in a neat, patient hand, signed off in Professor Slughorn’s dislikeable loop. Slughorn had signed when asked, amused and faintly flattered by the notion that a second-year boy wanted to read about “magical history, my boy? Excellent, excellent—shows a sound mind.” The librarian adjusted her spectacles, read the signature, and hesitated. There was another shadow at the end of the stack.

Dumbledore stood there not quite touching the books. He wore a moth-eaten cardigan under robes the colour of tinned peas. His hair looked unbrushed, and his spectacles made his eyes seem larger and more guileless than any adult had rights to. He arranged his mouth as if he were biting back a smile and had been doing so for some time.

“You have become very industrious, Tom,” said Dumbledore.

Tom kept his posture easy. He put the pen down as if he were the sort who put pens down. “There is a great deal in the library,” he said.

“There is,” said Dumbledore. “And you have a good memory for places. It will get crowded if you put too much in.”

The librarian made a faint sound of agreement. Dumbledore lifted his hand, studying his own fingernails as if they had confided something to him that he could not quite believe. “I find reports awfully soporific,” he said, tone thoughtful. “All those little notices of tiny tragedies. Still, one learns things there one cannot get from grand histories.”

Tom turned a fraction on his chair to keep both faces in view. The back of his neck felt cold, though the fire in the grate made a steady flue-roar. “Professor Slughorn approved it,” he said to the librarian. He kept the sentence perfectly reasonable. “You can ring him if you wish.”

“That will not be necessary,” she said, relenting at once. Authority marked other authority and stood aside. She stamped the slip and slid it back to him, thin mouth softening under the sniff. “No ink blots.”

“I could recommend a charm for spattered ink,” said Dumbledore. His voice sounded idle, but Tom knew he did not speak idly. “It leaves the page untouched. Very precise. Though—” He tilted his head, the lenses catching light. “One would need a steady hand.”

Tom lifted the pen with a deliberate lightness and rolled it between forefinger and thumb, the nib refusing to gather any shine. “My hand is steady,” he said.

"So I have observed," said Dumbledore. He smiled at last; it had a careless tilt. "Carry on."

For a moment Dumbledore's hand hovered at his side as if reaching for something—a word, perhaps, or a question he had decided not to ask. Then the hand settled, and he turned away. Tom noted the hesitation the way one notes a crack in a wall: something to watch, something that might widen.

He drifted away down the aisle and out into the main passage with no more sound than the librarian. Tom watched the end of the corridor until the whorl of dust settled, then set the report flat and went back to his note. The light moved across the table; the second hand on the near clock ticked behind the stacks. He wrote “Little Hangleton” twice more, folded the note into nothing and tucked it inside the inside pocket where no one had a right to put a hand. It lay there like a pebble against his ribs.

He waited until his breathing had the sameness of the clock, then turned the page again and read the follow-up: “Subsequent breach, two years later. Sentences carried out. See related.” The rest stirred but refused to come out. The report had been bound out of order; a boy had cut half a page a generation ago. It had the ragged edge of theft.

Tom did not curse. He did nothing but close the book gently and arrange the pile once more so tidiness covered absence. He stood. He slid the note deeper; his skin felt tight over his face. He exchanged a glance with the librarian, small, polite. He stepped into the corridor and the library gave up its hold on him with the roughness of wood against sleeve.

Outside, the stone held its night-cold, even at midday. He kept the line of Dumbledore’s mouth in his mind and filed it with the other expressions. It had not been careless. It never was.

He climbed the stairs and stepped neatly aside for a hurrying flock of lower-year Ravenclaws with their arms full of rolls; two of them parted around him. Their whispers broke like water around a stone.

In Transfiguration that afternoon he kept his wand low at first. They were to turn a soup spoon into a mouse and back again, a trick that liked to leave you with a mouse of chrome or a spoon with whiskers. He watched the movement of wrists in the rows ahead until the room filled with squeaks and mutters. The air smelled faintly metallic. It had begun to rain outside; the windows wore a lattice of water. Dumbledore stood with his hands in his sleeves, watching the little tragedies of whiskery spoons.

“Now,” he said, looking up. “A mouse has warmth. It runs. A spoon is cold and likes to lie still. Convince your spoon that it is motion. You will find that most things prefer to stay as they are. You must disagree without shouting.”

Tom touched his wand to the spoon and let the word build at the back of his tongue before he let it go. The incantation left his mouth—softly—and the spoon tipped of its own accord. He thought of sinew. He thought of the precise shiver of life. The metal shivered, ran like quicksilver into small, rapid beats; whiskers unfurled. The mouse stood where the spoon had lain, whiskers quivering, and looked at him with the expression of a thing newly pushed into being. He set it down. It ran, perfectly mouse-quick, to the edge of the desk and then stopped there, fur thinking.

Dumbledore’s shadow crossed the desk. “That,” he said, “is a mouse.” His voice held no surprise. He set his index finger down on the desk. The mouse touched it with its nose and sat up like a prayer. “Very good, Mr Riddle.”

Tom inclined his head by the smallest fraction. Across the aisle Abraxas Malfoy glanced over. Abraxas had that fine pale fairness that some boys wore like a uniform; his voice was silk, and he let it glide. Tom had watched him since September the way one watched something one meant to overtake and step over. Abraxas’s spoon had ears and not much else; he pushed them flat with his thumb and smiled faintly, pleasant even when he was irked.

After class, Abraxas drifted towards him as if he were walking past and had been unaccountably halted. “Neat work,” he said. “Makes the rest of us look ridiculous.”

“I would not assume the rest of you needed help,” said Tom. He slid the transformed mouse back to spoon without hurry. The warmth ran out of it; the metal lay there, calm and blank. “You will get it.”

Abraxas’s mouth smiled with his lips and not his eyes. “If one paid attention to Dumbledore,” he said in a low voice, “one would be convinced that anyone can do anything. I cannot agree.”

Tom lifted a shoulder. “You might be right,” he said. He inclined his head toward the door where the rain made the corridor into a watery plane. “Lunch?”

“Slughorn ditched us for pudding with the Ravenclaws,” Abraxas said. He slid his hair back with one ringed hand. The ring flashed; old family gold. “I suppose we will have to fetch it ourselves.”

The boys at Slytherin were gentler with their knives when Slughorn sat with them, laughing and letting them think he had no eye for who flinched when others made jokes. Today he sat at the Head Table, whispering to Professor Merrythought with half his face, and casting glances at Tom he had the decency to think were secret. Tom kept his own face smooth. He ate deliberately; you did not want to look ravenous, he had discovered. The crueller sorts at the Orphanage had sniffed at hunger the way hounds did; you kept them away by making them think you ate when they did not look.

Nott slid along the bench and set down his bread. He was narrow, solemn, and wore his hair flat. His bag rattled with books even at meals. He cleared his throat as if to knock and said in a very quiet voice, “Have you ever read Baines’s Guide to Lost Houses?”

“Have you,” said Abraxas, drawling, “reached the point where Baines turns into himself? It is my favourite part.”

Nott looked at Abraxas with a blankness that could have been either politeness or contempt. “I thought you might like it,” he said to Tom. “There is a section on the Midlands that is of… interest.”

Tom tore off a piece of bread and made his face indifferent. He had learned that if you leaned you got less. “Which houses,” he said.

“Small ones,” said Nott. “There is one called the Riddle House. It is not wizard-owned. It stands above a village called Little Hangleton. There is comment on it because three Muggles were found dead there fifty years ago, no marks. The book says there was talk. He says the talk was baseless. The book is not always correct.”

Abraxas raised his brows. “How quaint,” he said. “You have a Riddle House out there, Riddle. Will you have a plaque made?”

Tom bit his bread. He kept his eyes on his plate. “I have no interest in Muggle houses,” he said. He took a sip of water. His hand did not shake. Little Hangleton echoed under his tongue. The words had clustered together in two different books now and therefore existed doubly.

Nott pushed his glasses up his nose with a single finger. “Baines has bad footnotes but good maps,” he said. “If you wished to read it, I can put it in your bag the way one might a cucumber, and no one would notice.”

Abraxas laughed in his throat. “The noble Nott. Stuffing cucumbers for the cause.” He broke his bread neatly. “If you want actual sources, you would do better to look at the old Prophets. One learns a great deal if one can keep the boredom at bay long enough to read the births and deaths.”

“Abraxas reads the births to see who can be invited to dinner in ten years,” Nott said without warmth. “He leaves the deaths to someone else.”

Abraxas’s smile turned genuine. “Guilty,” he said.

Tom folded his napkin. “Thank you for the thought,” he said to Nott. He kept his voice casual. “If you leave it in the common room under the left-hand candelabrum, I will know it is there.”

Nott nodded once. “Of course,” he said.

In the afternoon the rain drove hard against the windows and ran like a river down the stone. The common room was warmer; the fire licked up the chimney with a sound like paper tearing. Someone had left a chessboard set up; the white queen leaned as if she had had enough. Tom sat near the far wall in the shadow of the nearest candelabrum, and when Nott passed, the book slid soundlessly from one bag to another under a fold of cloak.

Abraxas came after, unhurried, and dropped into the chair opposite and looked as if he had always meant to sit there. “You have been monopolising the librarian,” he said. “She has taken to stroking spines in your honour.”

Tom set the book half-open on his knee and caught the crease with a finger. “She is fond of rules,” he said.

“You must like that,” said Abraxas. He tilted his head, drops still shining in his pale hair. “Other people’s rules. Not yours.”

Tom turned a page without looking down. Nott watched him from a chair with his ankles together, his eyes as steady as a cat’s. The book was Baines. It did not deserve a good binding. The ink was thin. The maps were good.

There it was, in a map of the ridge and the valley below it: Great Hangleton and Little Hangleton, their roads making knots like string that had been tied and forgotten. The description that followed was in Baines’s pinched style: The Riddle house is of some antiquity, built in the early 1700s by a family of importers whose fortune was made in hides. Became local point of interest in the 1890s and 1900s owing to unpleasant rumour concerning sudden deaths. The Gaunt family is also noted as long resident in the area, in a cottage outside the village proper. The only wizarding blood recorded of that parish.

Tom turned the page under his finger and kept the little exultation pressed flat. The Gaunts and the Riddle House shared a page. The letters lay next to one another like things that had been introduced and found they could not stop talking.

He ended at the back where the index listed Gaunt with four references; his breath stayed even. He closed the book and slid it under his chair, then sat with his hands on his knees so the need to get up did not shake them.

Abraxas unfolded his own book and did not read it. “You will be very bored in London,” he said, as if he had only just thought of it. “There is nothing to do but avoid things.”

“There is nothing to do everywhere else,” said Tom. “One learns to make it.”

“Ah,” said Abraxas. His mouth curled. “You make things happen,” he said. His tone was dry. He tossed a pawn from hand to hand and made it vanish with lazy skill. When it reappeared in his palm, he made a little moue at it, as if it had been slow to obey. “Do you intend to make something happen in the Midlands?”

Tom made stillness. He did not look at the map. He looked at Abraxas until Abraxas’s eyes slid away, the laugh under his breath softening. “I intend to know where I am stepping,” he said.

“Very wise,” said Abraxas. “Dumbledore is watching you.”

Tom did not blink. “Is he.”

“He turns when you come into a room,” Abraxas said, as if remarking on an experiment. “He thinks you will be more yourself when watched. Some people are, you know. They put on a good show and then forget that anyone could be thinking.”

Nott’s hands were folded over Baines. “He is watching all of us,” he said. “He does not trust our House.”

“He trusts some of us to trust him,” said Abraxas. He rubbed the pawn with his thumb. “He will be disappointed.” He smiled without showing his teeth. “Not in all cases, of course.”

Tom let his gaze return to the fire. The flames wrote and unwrote themselves; the jets whistled; the iron glowed. He had known for months that Dumbledore’s shadow had lengthened. The tone in Dumbledore’s class had altered infinitesimally when Tom’s name was called. The Transfiguration master’s presence in the library had not been accident. The small comments. The little questions that were not questions. It had become a habit in the last weeks for Dumbledore to stand in the passage at unexpected moments with his mouth as if he might smile and might not.

That evening Tom went back to the library late, after dinner, when the light went low enough to make the pages yellow. He had in his pocket the note with the name of the village, and Baines’s page lay across it in his mind, a transparency on a larger sheet. The librarian let him pass with a narrow look that held both approval and disapproval; he set his bag on the end of the table nearest the window so the cold could work on him until he forgot it. The bound Daily Prophets sat in long ranks under a layer of time. He drew down the years around 1898 and set the volume on particular care.

There were births and deaths exactly as Abraxas had predicted. There were notices of dragon hearings and stern letters on broom regulations, and in the little front-of-book corners there were snippets that had the urgent breathlessness of gossip. He read them coldly. It went like this: “Unseemly Disturbance in Little Hangleton—Witch or Wife?” and “Tragedy at the Big House—Locals at a Loss.” He did not, quite, allow himself impatience. On the fourth volume, he found what he had come for. It was an unhandsome little item, stuck between a photograph of a rabbits’ breeding ban and an interview with a warlock who had made his fireplace eat his foot.

“Ministry Official Assaulted: Following allegations of threatening behaviour on the part of a wizard long resident in the remote village of Little Hangleton, a Ministry official (name withheld) was subjected to an unprovoked attack upon his arrival at the wizard’s dwelling. Mr Marvolo Gaunt was arrested and charged with threatening behaviour and resisting arrest. Ministry to consider a review of wand privileges for both Mr Gaunt and his son. Mr Gaunt appeared in possession of a ring believed to be of ancient manufacture, which has been returned to him in accordance with due process.”

Underneath, in a different hand, some later clerk had added: “Later proceedings resulted in custodial sentence. See Court and Council Reports.”

Tom ran his thumb down the edge of the page. The paper had a small tear where someone’s nail had gone through. He kept his hands still. The black stone in the ring stood up in the sentence like a tooth in a mouth.

He took out his scrap of parchment and wrote “Gaunt—ring (black stone)—Little Hangleton—Marvolo,” each with a precision he would have liked to use to carve. He wrote each name once only, as if repetition would make them heavy, too heavy to carry away. He slid the scrap inside his sleeve.

A soft noise at his shoulder made him look up. It was not Dumbledore. Slughorn floated between the stacks with a book in each hand and a look like a large honey-badger shuffling in for a free snack. “My boy,” he said, keeping his voice down nevertheless. “What good taste. The old Prophets. I always say, if you want to know the present, you look at what the old fools thought was important.”

“Professor,” said Tom. “I find the language interesting.”

“Language,” Slughorn said, delighted. He lowered himself into the chair opposite as if his legs had remembered suddenly that they were not meant to hold him up forever. “Splendid. Splendid. You will have to come to my sitting room tonight for a little tea. Nothing formal, just a few of the brighter minds. I have a new pineapple. Abraxas will be there, and little Black. And Nott, too, I think. He is very tedious but he does his work.” He leaned forward, voice thickening with interest. “What brings you to this particular backwater? Not,” he said, and laughed, “that I expect you to tell me.”

“History,” said Tom. He watched Slughorn as one might watch a warm, soft-mouthed animal that could, if one were careless, become suddenly sharp. “It makes mistakes. It is useful to know where it hid them.”

“Ha!” said Slughorn, softly. “Oh, I must write that down. You are going to go far, my boy.” He patted Tom’s hand with two fingers and then, as if he had caught himself, removed his hand at once. “Eight o’clock,” he said. “Do not be late. I may have a little something for you.”

Slughorn shambled away between the stacks and paused to gossip with the librarian, his broad face above the counter charming to the edge of smarm. Tom looked at the paragraph and then at the words he had written. He did not have to read again. He could read his own paper in the dark now.

He left the library without haste. In the passage, footsteps echoed a second after his own, so that he seemed to be walking twice. He turned left instinctively and came into the corridor where Dumbledore’s office lay. He stopped at once and turned neatly to go the other way. He did not feel eyes on his back; the hairs at the back of his neck remained flat. The impulse to show himself and let Dumbledore see him in this place of his own choosing lifted like something heavy and smooth and did not quite tip.

Slughorn’s sitting room was hot and smelled of pineapple as advertised. A long glass bowl sat on a table that had a scorch on it from some former indiscretion. Abraxas lounged on the arm of a chair, his knees crossed—no one else would have presumed it—and Black stood with his hands in his pockets and a grin that showed one tooth snagged at the corner, the sort of grin that turned into mischief without permission. Nott stood at a remove with a teacup, watching Slughorn with attentive boredom.

“Mr Riddle!” Slughorn cried, as if he had been outside calling and now Tom had come in from a wind. “Pineapple.”

Tom accepted the wedge and ate it politely. The syrup stuck to the corner of his mouth and he made sure it did not remain. Slughorn beamed about at his little clutch of prizes. He had a way with boys that made them think he could make them, and then he did not create them but he did place them carefully at the start of races and clip their heels if they lagged. Tom listened. He said very little. He was not there to be seen speaking.

They spoke of Quidditch. They spoke of a hex Merrythought had mentioned that made one’s earlobes grow impressively until the wearer could not get through small doors. They spoke, delicately, of war and rumours about raids in Germany, which had made some of the older Slytherins straighten without knowing they had done so. Slughorn’s smile grew smaller and more fixed.

“Tom,” he said, rescuing himself, “you must show us the thing you did with the mouse this afternoon. Dumbledore looked positively pained to be pleased. It will do his soul good.”

“I should prefer to keep my animals alive,” said Tom. He sat down slowly, the pineapple resting aside, and let the charm run out of his wandless fingers. The trifle on Slughorn’s plate lifted an inch and drifted across a gap to settle again, not a wobble out of place. Abraxas’s brows lifted a fraction; Black’s grin relaxed; Nott, who had known, did not look. Tom set the plate down without looking at it and picked up his napkin.

Slughorn clapped soundlessly with his fingertips on the arm of his chair. “Effortless,” he said. “If only it were always so. Dumbledore speaks highly of your natural aptitude, Tom.”

Tom’s jaw tensed and un-tensed before he could help it. “Professor Dumbledore is generous in his general assessments,” he said.

“Now, now,” said Slughorn. He tapped the rim of his glass with a fingernail. “He remembers what is worth remembering. He has you at the front of his mind.” He dropped his voice in the way a man might lower it before opening a box, making a little ceremony of the privacy. “You must be patient with him. He likes to look to see what you will do if you know you are being looked at.”

Abraxas made a sound like a muffled laugh. “Yes,” he said. His eyes slid to Tom and away again. “He does.”

Tom folded his napkin. “Patience,” he said, flatly agreeably. He sat through Slughorn’s anecdotes with care. Slughorn told a story about an ogre and a shoe that was almost certainly not true. The pineapple left syrup on the plates. The fire hissed and spat. The faces around him glowed and faded and glowed.

He returned to the dormitory under the lake and lay a long time looking at the smear of green where the water moved against the windows. The sound of Nott’s breathing was regular. Abraxas snored once, an elegant sound if a snore could be called that, and then did not snore again. Tom placed the words in a neat row in his head and watched them until they settled into a shape: Little Hangleton. Gaunt. Ring. Black stone.

He could go to Little Hangleton in summer. He could find the house they called the Riddle House and the hovel the Gaunts had used. He could step down to a village and not spend a knut. He could ask the first old man by the shop. He could say, I am looking for a place. I knew someone who lived here. He could have a way of asking questions that invited answers.

He had other facts. He had a map. He had the patience to invent a reason. He had the patience to be believed. The pressure of that patience pressed his ribs from within until it ached like bruises.

He had almost nothing else. He had a handful of coins. He had the Orphanage and a matron who counted. He had Dumbledore and the way Dumbledore loitered in doorways as if he had nowhere else to be. He had Slughorn, who would happily sign anything if it made his favourite grow, but who would also gossip about anything he had signed if it made him glow. He had the trains. He had the notice on the Orphanage board that said Summer Outings to Hampstead Heath would occur only in groups of four and under observation. He had the memory of the last time he had left London and how quickly Mrs Cole had counted the heads twice when he came back with the others.

The next day he raised his hand in Defence and answered a question that asked for an answer that sounded simple when you had thought of it. Professor Merrythought’s eyes brightened. In Charms he made a doorbell sing like a glass without cracking the bell. Flitwick lit like a candle at his desk. The little adoration of professors came without work now. He spent it carefully.

The week after, they had a written exam in Transfiguration six weeks early. Dumbledore swam up and down the aisles as if he were a fish who had been, unaccountably, set to walk. He stopped behind Tom for longer than he stopped behind others. Tom felt the pause as a pressure at the back of the head in a dream when someone stands very close and does not breathe.

After the exam Dumbledore found a reason to speak to him in the corridor. “You have been reading old reports,” he said. He had a folded sheaf of essays under one arm and a tie that sat askew. “They are a rather sad breed. They list crimes and leave out people.”

“The reports write what someone might want written,” said Tom.

“Do they?” said Dumbledore. He tucked the essays under the other arm, as if the shift would change the substance. “Sometimes they accidentally write what happened. The most difficult thing to recover is accident.” He paused. “You will not go into the Restricted Section without permission.”

Tom considered allowing surprise to ride out of his face and away. He did not. “I have not asked for it,” he said.

“If you had, I would have denied it,” said Dumbledore, with the sort of kind finality with which one tells a boy he cannot, at twelve, marry the Queen. “There are things in there I would not have you find without something between you and them.”

“Between us?” said Tom. His tone was perfectly curious.

“Between them and you,” said Dumbledore. He smiled. It was almost gentle. “Much of life consists in guarding tenderness. That is what it is for, in the first instance.” He glanced at the clock on the landing with practised vagueness. “You will be late for your next class.”

He moved away then, and did not look back. It was a habit with him that made the back of his head as arrogant as his face was gentle. Tom’s fingers tightened once then slackened. He went the other way and arrived in time, with a calm that looked like care rather than triumph. He turned a toad into an inkwell and back again and did not spill a drop of ink. Abraxas murmured, “Well,” and for once did not make a joke to spoil it. Nott watched and made a small noise that might have been satisfaction, and handed Tom a folded paper under the desk that contained a hand-drawn copy of the Baines map with a dotted line that would take one up the ridge to the Riddle house.

The days lengthened. The light in the mornings had that watery quality that wanted to be summer. There were puddles that persisted in corners of the grounds and sparkled with a patience Tom approved. The library grew warmer, and Tom grew more careful—never sitting with his back to the open room, never taking down a book without first checking the shadows between the shelves.

Slughorn spoke to him after a class and said something about plants that would flourish in chalk soil. He spoke aimlessly, and his eyes did not quite meet Tom’s. “I had a letter from a friend in the Midlands,” he said finally, as one might finally admit to a disreputable cousin. “They say it is very pretty up there. I never go. It rains.”

“It rains here,” said Tom.

“You have a point,” said Slughorn. He clapped Tom’s shoulder. The hand was soft and warm and gone. “If you are planning a trip,” he added, half-smiling, “do not go without telling me. I will need to arrange for a napkin.”

“A what,” said Tom.

“A story,” Slughorn said. He winked. “I am very good at telling them. I have been for years.”

Tom looked at him and said nothing. Slughorn’s smile became faintly uncomfortable; he nodded and slid away into the corridor and was absorbed by a group of seventh-years who enjoyed flattering him.

The last week of term cracked open with a stretch of sunlight and four days of reprieve from rain. The lawns steamed. The owls flew low. Tom sat at the window before breakfast and counted his coins twice. He laid them in a row and made them look like more than they were, and then he put them away. He had written to no one; he had asked no one for anything. He did not like asking. He could not, would not, write to Slughorn and ask for a pass to a village without a plausible account; he could not invent a plausible account that did not require another truth to support it. He would not give Dumbledore a handhold.

He folded the paper with the dotted line of Nott’s map so that the edge wore thin. He kept it perfectly flat and still it wore. He took it out and looked at it when no one could come upon him, and then put it away and did not put his hand to that pocket again, even to confirm its presence, because he did not believe in the superstition that touch secured anything. He believed in other things. He believed in a list that grew and then grew precise and then became a deed.

In the Great Hall Abraxas said, “If you wish a lift over the summer, I could do something about that.” He spoke lazily and watched his thumb make a semicircle on the rim of his glass.

Tom did not answer at once, and Abraxas’s eyes flicked to his face. “I should be delighted,” said Tom, voice pleasant.

“You have never seen my mother,” said Abraxas, with a smile like sunlight on a blade. “She would not be delighted.”

“Of course,” said Tom. He felt Nott’s gaze from the other side of the table—quick, narrow.

“Another year,” Abraxas added, too lightly. “When it becomes fun to shock her. At present she would not understand that you are useful.”

Tom set down his cup. “Of course,” he said again. They ate more slowly. The Hall breathed around them. Tom’s hand adjusted the knife in front of him until it lay perfectly parallel with the fork. He did not change the expression of his mouth.

Nott’s hand slid across the table like a quiet animal and set down an envelope. “For the trains,” he said.

Tom did not move. Abraxas’s head turned; his smile vanished as if someone had put out a light. “No,” he said.

Nott’s eyes did not move to him. “It is information,” he said to Tom. “Not coin. Schedules. You are not the only one who reads the things no one else can be bothered with. If you were so inclined,” he said, bland as milk, “you could get a train north without anyone noticing if you left with a group for Hampstead. You would be seen getting on one. No one would think to watch you get off another. If you were inclined.”

Tom’s fingers tightened under the table. He did not reach for the envelope. “I am inclined to notice that your plan requires money,” he said. “I have other uses for my small money.”

Abraxas looked from one to the other and then smiled, very small. “Nott enjoys being useful,” he said. “It keeps him from being eaten.”

“It is something to be eaten last,” said Nott.

Tom took the envelope, weighed it, and slid it into his pocket. The paper made a small, satisfying noise. “Thank you,” he said.

Nott nodded once.

That afternoon Dumbledore stood at the window at the far end of the corridor just outside Charms. His hands were behind his back. The light made a pale fire in his hair. Tom approached and walked past without stopping. Dumbledore did not look round. He said, without turning, “If you need assistance this summer, Mr Riddle, you will ask in good time.”

Tom did not stop. “No,” he said. He did not make the word sharp. “I will not.”

Dumbledore turned then. He had troubled to look surprised, but not very much. He smiled as if Tom had patted him on the shoulder and told him a joke he had heard before. “As you wish,” he said. “We will keep a place for you here.”

Tom went down the stairs. His footfalls fell in the same places as they always did. He made them fall there. The castle had grooves; one learned them and one used them.

On the last evening, when trunks lay open in the common room and everyone put things into them that seemed not to want to go, Tom stood by the hearth with his hands behind his back and watched the light stack itself against the stone and slide. On the low table lay Nott’s sketch-map and a list of trains with times and a set of names of small stations that had never been printed in any history book because no one would ever read a book about them. He knew exactly which two train changes would place him at a little station in the valley near the shape of the map that Nott had made.

He counted the number of paces from the hearth to his bed and back twice. He put the envelope with the train times into the trunk and then took it out and put it back into his pocket. He could spend the money and he could manage the time and he could lie with a straight face and get away from the Orphanage and go up and come down and climb the ridge and step into the little belt of trees and look at the house with his own eyes and know. He could stand at the edge of the path wear the grass refused to grow and listen to the silence, and step on into the silence and see whether the house refused to let him pass.

He shut his eyes and opened them. He had not miscounted anything. He had miscounted everything. The Orphanage had changed its summer rules after a boy had gone missing three years ago. He would be counted in and out of doors and rooms. Mrs Cole would smile at him and count his fingers if he let her. Dumbledore watched him the way an old cat watched a field where a mouse had run yesterday; he watched nothing and everything and sat on nothing with an enormous patience. Slughorn would—without malice, without intention—let a remark slip that would put a different gleam in the matron’s eye. The train might make the wrong stop and he would have to invent a new story on the platform while someone in blue asked him questions and looked at his pockets.

Tom pressed his palms together and felt how the bones met. It would not hurt to wait. It would hurt to be forced to wait. That was the difference. He opened his eyes and took the envelope and placed it under the tray that fit inside the trunk lid where a person would not immediately think to look. He did it once, carefully, and he did it a second time because the first time he had not liked the sound. He shut the lid. He fastened the latch. He said nothing.

He went up to the common room and sat by the window and watched the lake, which returned nothing. Nott came and sat and did not speak. Abraxas came and spoke and said, quite carelessly, “It is a pity you cannot join us in June,” and the carefulness of the carelessness made Tom’s jaw move for the first time that evening.

“Another year,” said Tom, and made it sound like a plan.

“Precisely,” said Abraxas. He held out a hand in his languid way. Tom shook it because he intended to get something later that would be easier to get if he did. Abraxas’s fingers were cool and dry, and the ring bit Tom’s knuckle for a second and then let go.

The night wore past. Boys moved around him like fish in a shallow stream and talked of things that would not happen and of things they said would and never would. The lights burnt down. The lake breathed against the glass, slow and mindless. Tom rose when it became clear that no more could be extracted from the day, went down into the dormitory, and lay and watched the colour of the water.

In the morning they were driven towards the carriages. The prefects’s voices had the exhausted cheerfulness of people who had been asked to be cheerful too many times. Dumbledore stood in the courtyard and spoke to each boy with that particular attention that made boys think they had been singled out when really everyone had. When Tom passed, he said only, “Good summer, Mr Riddle,” with eye contact and nothing else, and Tom nodded once and got into the carriage.

The train pulled out. The castle retreated and did not look back. Tom sat where he could see both the door and the window without turning his head, and Abraxas and Nott joined him, and the chatter of other compartments came in and drifted away. Nott handed him a newspaper folded to the shipping times and said nothing. Abraxas looked out the window and admired his own reflection without appearing to, and then looked away before anyone could sympathise. When the trolley witch came, Tom bought nothing. He sat and watched the countryside open and narrow. He put his hand to his pocket and then took it away and then did not put it there again.

He had the name of a place and the knowledge of a ring with a black stone. He had the patience to set a hand on a door and keep it there until the wood remembered he had touched it. He had time, whether he wanted it or not. He would wait because he chose to and not because they made him. He looked at the list of trains and folded the paper and slid it away. It lay against his ribs and made a small stiffness there that did not yield. He set his mouth in its courteous line and said something neutral and true to Abraxas; Abraxas smiled and answered in kind; Nott made a small noise like a cat in agreement. The train went on, steady, towards London. The thought of Little Hangleton went with it and would not go away. When he could go, he would go. He did not imagine otherwise. He kept his hands folded and his eyes open and counted the miles as if one could do that in the head and have it matter. He had put his foot upon the path. The path would be there when he set his weight to it.