He'd been dreaming about...baby Draco Malfoy and the attack on the Malfoy Manor? What the heck, why dream of that, of all things?
Though Draco had been cute if sometimes (often) noisy and inconvenient, especially in the middle of a Magical Battlefield (and who cared if The Old Horror AKA Albus Dumbledore thought the tike didn't feel like a proper Pureblood, anyhow), and Lucius and Narcissa...
Had been brave. Then.
Tom shook himself, then. It was ridiculous - as if he had time to be that sopping sentimental about something that hadn't even happened yet, and was most unlikely to happen at all even in the future, if all those theories about branching timelines were actually correct, that is...
...And as for the reason he'd been dreaming of that particular Incident...just who did he think he was kidding, as some of his Loyal Servant's children would have put it - as if he couldn't tell just why he was dreaming of those girls who looked just like Nadja Applefield and Rosemary Applefield had once upon a time, now...
Tom sighed, then. Oh, come on, now, T. M. Riddle, buck up and soldier.
It wasn't like he really had a choice, after all.
"Helen... Helen? Wake up now..."
Helen woke up with a sigh, grubby hands rubbing her eyes.
"Tom? I'm hungry..."
"I know, I know..." Tom gave her some of the bread he'd gotten yesterday, and watched her eat it, chewing on a small morsel himself - the transformed riceballs the Wolf had given them were all gone, sadly enough.
"...Tom?"
"Mmmmmmmm?"
"Is it close by, where we're trying to go, now?"
Well, from the way the area was humming with cloaking spells over cloaking spells...
"Yes, I think so."
And the place turned out to be not far from where they had spent the night at all, though getting through all the layers of wards were a pain, to put in mildly.
But they did make it in all long last, and that was what really mattered, after all...
"Hail, Ma'am!" Tom called out to the woman with honey-gold hair. She'd been hanging the washing out on lines, muggle-style, but the Magic was practically radiating off her. Powerful, powerful indeed...
She looked back at him quizzically, green eyes blinking in the noon light.
"Oh. ...Why, hello, young wizardling sir." She looked puzzled for a moment, looking at his - clothes, Tom realized. Right. He'd transformed them into looking halfway decent at least, and he'd done the same for Helen's clothes, but with a witch with this much plain sheer power...
Oh, well - Tom sighed, again. It wasn't as if he could stop now...
"This is the - school for squibs, ma'am?"
"- You hear correctly, young wizardling sir." The woman smiled gently, then. "Though it's not just for squibs, and it's name is the Applefield School, Mister...?..."
"Ah, my name is Tom, Tom Riddle, and this is my - cousin, Helen..."
"Ahh." The woman took a long look at Helen, then, and then smiled again with approval at him (Approval? At him?), eyes green, beautiful and maternal. (- But still, to him, Rosemary was the more beautiful - )
" - My name is Nadja Applefield Fleminger, and I am the Headmistress."
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(Posted Sat, 06 Jan 2007 14:22)
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