"There are children who are born looking at the light. And there are children who are born staring into the dark, waiting for it to blink." — Albus Dumbledore, Private Journals
July 1938, London
London tasted of wet wool, unwashed pavement, and the cloying, sulfurous choke of industry. The rain here was a miserable, tepid affair that coated the skin in a film of grime rather than washing it clean, a stark contrast to the air Albus Dumbledore had been breathing only hours before.
He stepped out of a shadowed alleyway in Lambeth, adjusting the lapels of a suit cut from crushed velvet the color of a bruised plum. To the Muggles hurrying past with their heads ducked against the drizzle, he was merely an eccentricity, a tall, auburn-haired man who had seemingly dressed for a different century.
But Dumbledore was not entirely in London. Not yet.
His skin still hummed with the absolute, shattering cold of the upper Ural Mountains. The air in his lungs still tasted of ozone and ancient ice. He had spent the last fortnight not in the comforts of Hogwarts, but in a cavern of blue crystal five thousand miles above sea level, debating the ethics of concealment with Ignis-Aeterna, a Star-Eater dragon whose wingspan could shadow a city. The creature had been ancient when Rome was a collection of mud huts, speaking in a language of grinding tectonic plates and thermal vents.
Dumbledore adjusted his fedora. He could still feel the residual hum of the dragon's conversation vibrating in his molars, a cosmic background noise that made the mundane world feel terrifyingly fragile.
He checked his pocket watch. Twelve hands spun lazily around a face that tracked planetary alignments rather than minutes. Mars was pulsing a dull, angry red against the brass.
Aggressive weather, Dumbledore mused, snapping the watch shut.
He turned toward the grim, square block of Wool's Orphanage. It rose out of the mist like a cliff face, surrounded by iron railings that were too high to be ornamental. It was a building designed to contain, not to nurture.
From a dragon who eats starlight to an orphanage, he thought wryly, stepping over a puddle that swirled with oil and grime. The glamour of the job is often overstated.
Dumbledore walked up the steps. He placed a hand on the iron gate. The metal groaned under his touch, shivering as if it recognized the immense electrical charge of the magic he was carrying. The lock clicked open with a submissive snap.
Mrs. Cole sat in her office, a woman whose spirit had been pickled in gin and buried under paperwork. The room smelled of boiled cabbage and despair. When she looked up, her eyes narrowed at the sight of the velvet suit, her instincts screaming that this man did not belong in her grey world.
"I have an appointment," Dumbledore said, smiling.
He didn't cast a spell. He didn't need to. He simply let the warmth of his presence fill the room. It flowed over Mrs. Cole like a heavy blanket, smoothing out the jagged edges of her suspicion and replacing them with a cozy, drowsy sense of trust. It was the magic of the Hearth, applied with the precision of a scalpel.
"Mr... Dumberton?" she asked, blinking as her hand drifted away from the teacup that definitely contained more Gordon's than Earl Grey.
"Dumbledore," he corrected gently, offering her a sherbet lemon. "Like the bumblebee. I am here to see Tom Riddle."
The name landed in the room like a stone in a pond. The ripples of comfort Dumbledore had created stuttered and broke. Mrs. Cole leaned back, the leather of her chair creaking.
"He's a funny one," she whispered. Her eyes darted to the ceiling, as if the boy were listening through the floorboards. "He was a funny baby. Never cried. Just... watched. And now... things happen around him. Nasty things."
"Fear is a natural reaction to the unusual, Mrs. Cole," Dumbledore said, his tone light, though his blue eyes were sharp, dissecting the nuances of her terror. "And I suspect Tom has been unusual his entire life."
She nodded, wrapping her cardigan tighter around herself. "Room 27. Top floor. He's usually alone. He likes it that way."
Dumbledore left her to her gin and climbed the stairs. The orphanage was noisy, the clatter of metal trays, the shouting of boys and girls, the weeping of a toddler, but as he ascended, the noise seemed to thin out, until he reached the top landing where the silence was absolute.
Pausing outside the door to Room 27, Dumbledore reached out with his senses, expanding his awareness into the wood and stone. The room felt cold, not thermally, despite the radiator hissing in the corner, but entropically. The chaotic, messy energy of childhood stopped dead at this threshold, replaced by air that was still, rigid, and organized by a will far too strong for an eleven-year-old boy.
He isn't leaking magic, Dumbledore realized, a flicker of professional interest sparking behind his spectacles. Most children splatter their power like paint. This boy is hoarding it. He's pulling the world tight around him like a coat.
He knocked, and a high, imperious voice bade him enter.
Tom Riddle sat on the bed, legs crossed, a book open on his lap. He was a strikingly handsome child, dark hair, high cheekbones, and pale skin that looked like it had never seen the sun. But it was the stillness that Dumbledore noted. Riddle didn't fidget. He didn't look up with curiosity; he looked up with assessment, his dark eyes sweeping over Dumbledore and categorizing him instantly: Threat. Authority. Outsider.
"You're the doctor," Riddle stated. "She sent you to look at me because they think I'm different."
"I am a Professor," Dumbledore said, taking the hard wooden chair and making it look like a throne. "My name is Albus Dumbledore. I work at a school called Hogwarts."
"A school for nutters," Riddle sneered. "I'm not mad. I know what I can do."
"Hogwarts is not an asylum," Dumbledore said pleasantly, crossing his legs so the plum velvet shimmered in the grey light. "It is a school for magic."
The word hung in the air, heavy and resonant. Riddle went very still, the sneer vanishing to be replaced by a terrifying intensity.
"Magic," he whispered, testing the word, tasting it. "I knew it."
He leaned forward, the mask of the polite orphan slipping to reveal the hunger underneath. "I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who are mean to me." His voice dropped to a hiss. "I can make them hurt. If I want to."
Dumbledore watched him, curious. He had seen many Muggle-borns receive their letters, usually reacting with disbelief or wonder. Riddle reacted with affirmation. There was a brilliance here, sharp and cold as cut diamond.
"That is magic, Tom," Dumbledore said softly. "It is what you are."
"Prove it." Riddle stood up, small but filling the room as the shadows seemed to stretch toward him. "If you're like me, then show me."
Dumbledore looked at the wardrobe, a miserable thing, battered and scarred by years of neglect. He didn't draw his wand; a wizard of his power did not need a focus for a demonstration this intimate. He reached out with his mind, brushing against the grain, the knots, the history of the tree that had died to make this cheap furniture.
You are not dead, Dumbledore thought, projecting his will into the cellulose. You remember the forest. You remember the heat. Be the heat.
"Observe," Dumbledore whispered.
The wardrobe dissolved into light. The transition was seamless, the peeling pine replaced by a construct of pure, swirling luminosity. It wasn't fire, fire consumes, this was radiance. The wardrobe was now made of woven sunlight, gold and blindingly white, pulsing with a heat that warmed the skin but did not scorch the floorboards.
It was a piece of a star brought down into a grey London room.
Riddle gasped, stumbling back onto the bed, shielding his eyes as his arrogance shattered, replaced by a raw, naked awe. "How..." he breathed, staring at the structure of light.
Dumbledore held the transformation for ten seconds, long enough to impress, short enough to be a mercy, before exhaling. The light folded back into itself, and the wood returned, scratches and peeling varnish intact, but the air around it smelled of ozone and summer forests.
"Transfiguration," Dumbledore noted calmly, popping a sherbet lemon into his mouth. "The art of Change."
Riddle was staring at the wardrobe, his chest heaving, looking at Dumbledore not with trust, but with the look a starving man gives a loaf of bread. "I want to go," he said instantly. "When do we leave?"
"There are formalities," Dumbledore said, his voice hardening, the whimsical professor vanishing to reveal the man who had stared down a Star-Eater. "But first, we must address the box."
Riddle froze. "What box?"
"The one on the shelf," Dumbledore said, nodding at the wardrobe. "The collection."
Riddle's face closed up, the walls slamming back down. "I don't know what you mean."
"Do not lie to me, Tom." Dumbledore didn't shout, but the room seemed to shrink, the pressure in the air spiking. "I can hear the whispers of the things you have taken. The thimble. The yo-yo. The mouth organ. They are loud."
He waved a hand, and the wardrobe door flew open, the cardboard box rattling violently on the top shelf. "Take it out."
Riddle glared at him, and for a second, Dumbledore felt a sharp, psychic spike, a crude, wandless attempt at a stinging hex directed at his mind. He brushed it aside with a thought, a flyswatter against a gnat.
"Open it."
Riddle moved stiffly, dumping the contents on the bed. They were trash to anyone else, but to Riddle, they were trophies.
"At Hogwarts," Dumbledore said, his blue eyes piercing, "we have a code. We do not steal. You will return these to their owners. And you will apologize."
"They won't know," Riddle argued, his voice tight.
"I will know." Dumbledore leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I know what you are doing, Tom. You are binding these objects. You are pouring your intent into them, trying to create anchors. You think that by owning their things, you own a piece of them. It is a primitive form of domination."
Riddle looked at the thimble. "They were just... things."
"Things have memories," Dumbledore warned, his voice grave. "And they are heavy. If you fill your pockets with the stolen grief of others, you will find it very difficult to swim."
Dumbledore stood to leave, having delivered the warning and the invitation.
"I can speak to snakes," Riddle said suddenly.
Dumbledore stopped at the door, turning slowly. Riddle was watching him, testing him.
"They find me," Riddle whispered. "They whisper to me. Is that normal? For a wizard?"
Dumbledore felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold room. Parseltongue. It wasn't a random gift or a mutation; it was a Ritual Bloodline. A pact made centuries ago by the founders of the Old Ways. It was the signature of a lineage that Dumbledore had though dormant in Britain.
"It is rare," Dumbledore said carefully. "But not unheard of."
"So it's not bad?"
"Gifts are not bad or good, Tom," Dumbledore said, looking into those dark, bottomless eyes. "They are tools. A hammer can build a cathedral, or it can crack a skull. The hammer doesn't care. The hand holding it does."
Riddle smiled, a cold, satisfied expression. He didn't hear the warning; he heard the validation. "I knew I was special," he whispered to the empty air.
Dumbledore walked out of the orphanage and back into the grey London street where the rain had intensified, washing the soot from the gutters. He buttoned his velvet coat, feeling the contrast between the magic he carried and the mundane misery of the city. He thought of the boy in the orphanage, the hoard of stolen things, the whisper of snakes, and the absolute, terrifying certainty in those eyes.
He paused at the corner of the street, looking back at the grim window on the top floor. Most teachers would be unnerved. Most would see a monster in the making.
Dumbledore adjusted his hat, and a low, rich chuckle escaped him, startling a passing businessman.
"The Serpent speaks, the wood becomes light, and the boy tries to hex a Grandmaster," Dumbledore murmured to the rain, his eyes twinkling with a sudden, sharp amusement. "Well. The next seven years at Hogwarts are certainly going to be interesting."
He turned on his heel. Crack.
He vanished, leaving the grey world behind, eager to see just how high the boy in the tower would try to climb before he realized the sky was full of dragons.
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Casual throwback to Tom Riddle :D. Hope you guys enjoyed the flashback. Please Like, Comment and please give a review! Power Stones are greatly appreciated.