The Great Hall was very, well ... great, in a way that he hadn't ever noticed before, with four long tables that seemed to go on forever, and a High Table on a raised platform so high it loomed over him in the distance. The few professors sitting at the table, though they seemed to be chatting amongst themselves, were surely watching him out of the corners of their eyes -- he was being so loud, he knew the whole Hall had to be looking at him and the way his footsteps clattered as he walked. So he stopped walking and simply stood threre, still by the door, only a few steps away from the Slytherin table and its few occupants, feeling the eyes of not just them but also the handful of Ravenclaws at the next table on him, and those of the Hufflepuffs, and the Gryffindors ... It almost made him turn right back around again, to go back to his dormitory and stay there until January, at the earliest; but his stomach gave a loud growl and he knew he couldn't run away, not if he didn't want to lie awake from hunger all night, and so he inched closer to the Slytherin table, his eyes fixed upon the ground. It'll be fine, he told himself, and it would be; it was only dinner. He had eaten dinner here every evening for the last three months and he could eat it now.
Only when he went to sit down at the very edge of the Slytherin table -- his usual spot, his little hideout close to the double doors, so that he could make a run for it whenever his dormmates got too close -- there was already someone sitting there. It was a boy Orion had never before seen in his life, though he was sure he must have, he just hadn't noticed him before, not with so many other Slytherins around. His face had blended in with the crowds, although he now wondered how that had ever happened; the boy had a very memorable face. He actually found him thinking it was quite a pretty face, though that was a weird thing to think, and so he pushed that thought away at once -- but he still thought it to be true even so; it was a pretty face, quite pale but with dark, brooding eyes that draw him closer, closer, drowning in them -- he barely even noticed that he was staring, and that the boy, with his sharp features, his high cheekbones, his short, dark hair that fell down to those same eyes -- that he was looking back at him. The moment he did realise that, he flinched back, and felt himself go red in the face. He mumbled an apology, and another, and quickly hurried along the table, trying to find safety and comfort in Walburga -- but she was looking at him, too, and her face was not kind, and he stopped walking for the second time since entering this dreadful Hall, and fell down into a set somewhere in the middle of the long table. He kept his face down, and ate only what stood closest to him, so that he didn't have to look up again all through dinner.
He practically ran from the Great Hall when he was finished. All the way down to the dungeons he ran, and into the common room (blissfully empty, so that nobody could judge him for running), and to his dormitory, where he climbed into bed and shut the curtains, and pulled the covers over his face. He didn't want to be here any more. He had made such a fool of himself, staring at that boy like that, staring into those deep, dark eyes ... how long had he stood there for? Wjatever must the boy think of him now, with his odd behaviour? Whatever did Walburga think of him now? He had ruined his only chance at some company this Christmas by irritating Walburga and now making a bad first impression with that other boy. What's it matter? asked a little voice in the back of his mind. He wouldn't have wanted to spend time with you anyway.
The worst thing about this little voice was that it was his own, and that it was right. The boy was obviously a bit older than him, perhaps a third-year or maybe a fourth-year, the same as Walburga, and therefore, just like Walburga, would probably consider him childish and any time spent with him 'supervising' and 'entertaining', even though he was eleven and that was quite old enough to be around older children without it turning into a babysitting gig. But still, older children did not seem to share this sentiment and therefor he was all on his own and would be all Christmas. Did it still beat going home and putting up with his family's critique? Did it? He suddenly wasn't so sure any more.
He pulled the blankets back down from his face and stared at the canopy for a while. H wasn't quite sure what to do with himself, truth be told. During term, whatever had been happening — however bad it had been — he had always known what came next. There had always been something next. A class, a meal, something. But now there wasn't. He had two whole weeks of something he needed to fill up, and he hadn't really thought about what he'd do with them. Especially not now that he was certain he was spending them in solitude, and solitude was a lot more lonely than he'd imagined. Perhaps he could write to Lucretia? She had told him to write, and although it had only been a couple of hours, he could always just start the letter now and not send it until there was more to say. Only he wasn't even sure what there was to say at all. He was terrible at that sort of thing — terrible at knowing what to put in letters — did he just write about what he'd done today? Write about the patethic way he'd seen the carriages off, the way he'd hoped for Walburga to be, well, less Walburga and more his cousin, the way he'd fallen asleep in the common room, the fiasco at dinner -- surely not? There wasn't a chance he was telling her about the trunk, either.
The trunk. Which held all his things, including ink, and parchment, and quills ... He closed his eyes, and thought it would be fine if he didn't get started on his letter today after all, because they wouldn't expect a letter from him on the first day. It would be fine to do it later, after he'd figured out how to do it at all.
***
He had to have fallen asleep at some point, because it was morning when he next opened his eyes. Only it didn't sound like morning at all, it was far too quiet for that. Lying very still, he strained his ears, so that he could figure out if it was safe to get up or not. Had his dormmates woken up yet? What time was it? He hadn’t a watch – his parents said he might get one for his twelfth birthday if he worked really hard and got good marks at school, so that meant he probably wasn’t going to get a watch at all, ever, because his marks were dreadful and he didn’t think he had it in him to improve them. It wasn’t even entirely his fault. Aside from the fact that his homework sometimes just went missing, the different teachers also seemed to forget that they weren’t the only ones setting homework, and there were only so many hours in a day. And then there were teachers like Binns, who had the habit of setting essays that were due in three days, and three days simply was not enough time, especially when there were other things also due. He’d said as much to Binns once, or tried to, but Binns hadn’t seemed entirely aware of who he was, or that he was talking to him, and had just nodded vaguely and moved on. He hadn’t ever tried talking to any of the other teachers about this, not even his Head of House, Professor Slughorn, because their ability to know what was going on around them, compared to Binns, was kind of scary.
At least he had quite a bit longer for the essay Binns had set before the holidays. Two whole weeks to do it, and nobody to steal it, or write rude things on it so he had to start again, because he was the only one of his dormitory who had stayed behind – he was the only one who had stayed behind!
A rush of excitement flooded him and he sat up in bed, opening the curtains a little to confirm it hadn’t all just been a dream. Four empty beds stared right back at him. He pinched himself to be sure he wasn’t still dreaming, but it hurt, and so he wasn’t, and this was real. He was in his dormitory, alone, and would be for two whole weeks!
He resisted the urge te call out in triumph and opened the curtains completely. He jumped out of bed, more well-rested than he had been any other day, and thought about what he’d do in an empty dormitory for two whole weeks. Well, he didn’t know what he’d do for two whole weeks, but he did know what he’d do now, because when had such an opportunity ever presented itself to him? When had he ever had the luxury of getting dressed slowly, brushing his teeth at his own pace, combing his hair, even having a lie-in …
Unfortunately he was reminded of the harsh reality only moments later, when he crouched on the floor to try and open his trunk, to get new robes out, only to find it as locked as it had been yesterday. The same flat, empty feeling he'd felt the first time flooded him again anf though he knew it would be useless, he still tried the latch again. It didn't open, of course. He tried to get at the goo in the keyhole with the end of his finger to clear it out, but that just made more of it get on his hand, and it clung there the way it had done before, all sticky and dark, and it wasn't coming off, either; he wiped it on the hem of his robes. He did this before thinking, and then remembered it wouldn't come of and regretted it at once, because now there was a long, dark smear on his robes on top of the smaller smear from before. He sat back and looked at it, and at his hand, which was only going to be blacker and stickier all holiday if he kept doing this. He'd just look more hideous and shabby and poor, as though he couldn't even afford several sets of robes - and these being his school robes just made it even worse. Whatever would the others think, especially when compared to Walburga, or even that other Slytherin, that boy with his perfectly neat robes, not a smudge on them. His perfect hair. His perfect face. Everything about him was just so ordered that Orion would look awful in comparison even without the current state of his hands and robes, so he just couldn’t go up for breakfast like this. Besides, Walburga would say something about it. Just imagine if she saw him with both hands covered in the black stuff, as though he'd washed them in ink. He shuddered at the thought. He shuddered even harder at the next thought that popped up, that dreadful thought he had so often, the one about telling Slughorn. Because this was something he had to fix all by himself; what could he even say to Slughorn about it. Sir, my dormmates put something in my lock – but he didn't know that for certain, did he, though he was fairly sure. Sir, I can't open my trunk – that was something, maybe. That was at least true and simple. Sir, all my things are inside and I can't get them out, and I don't know when it happened, and I don't know who did it – but he did know who had done it, mostly, and Slughorn would know he knew, or at least suspect it, and then what? Then he'd ask Alderton, and Blenkinsop, and Burke, who would all deny it, and they'd come back from Christmas furious, and he'd have all of next term to deal with that, and he hadn't even got through this term without crying in front of them already. He didn't know how to weigh it all up. He had never been good at knowing which thing would be worse, in the end.
He stood up again and looked around the room. Maybe there was something in this room that could help him unlock it. Maybe they’d left something behind. And it wasn’t really theft, taking something of theirs to help him open the trunk they’d locked. And so he went over to Alderton’s bed. He sat down and checked his bedside table, because that was the most logical place to keep these things, but the only things he could find were a single Gobstone and a Chocolate Frog card: Merlin. In short, nothing useful, and there was nothing useful on the bed, nor below it, either. Blenkinsop was just as disappointing, but he hadn’t really expected anything else from him. He was too neat to leave things lying around. Burke, however, was another matter entirely; he had so many things lying around that he wondered if he’d taken anything with him at all. There was a bag of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, half a Chocolate Frog, lots of empty Drooble’s wrappers but also some full ones, some more chocolate and other half-eaten sweets, and even a figurine of a Quidditch player Orion didn’t know, because he didn’t follow Quidditch, but he could tell that it was a Beater because it had the bat, which it swung it at him when he picked it up, hitting him hard on the thumb until he put it back down again. He rubbed his sore thumb and glared at the figurine, which had gone still again. He left it for what it was and did not touch it again, but confiscated everything else. It was payback for all the times Burke had taken his sweets from him, whenever he’d got some from home. He put the sweets all on his own bed and looked at his haul with a strange kind of satisfaction, even though none of it would help him unlock the trunk.
He’d take inventory, he decided. He didn’t want to eat it all at once, or he might get sick.
There turned out to be eight beans left in the bag from Bertie Bott’s – well, seven, because he helped himself to a green one. It was pear, and it sparked his confidence to take another green one, but that one turned out to be grass, which wasn’t the worst flavour he’d ever got but it wasn’t really tasty either. But that put him down to six beans, half a chocolate frog, three full packs of Drooble’s, eight sugar quills and an exploding bonbon he ate right away, because he rather liked those, and he wasn’t disappointed at all by the pleasant explosion in his mouth. And just because he could, he also took one of the four chocolate bars he’d found, and nibbled on it all the while as he walked over to Bulstrode’s bed, very curious to see what all he’d left behind.
But when he actually sat down on the bed, and looked into his drawers, the chocolate lost its taste, and his stomach was very heavy, and it just didn’t feel right to be going through his things. It didn’t feel right to be eating Burke’s chocolate, either. He put the bar down, suddenly sick. Why was he doing this? He got up and went to the toilet, drinking some water to rid himself of the taste of stolen sweets, swore to himself he’d never do it again, no matter how much they all deserved it, and put everything back where he found it.
All that was left for him then was to hope he didn’t see Walburga in the Great Hall, because he didn’t think he would survive the shame, though he did deserve her judgement; he was no better than his dormmates, going through their things like that, eating their sweets. What had he been thinking? All the joy of being at school alone for the holidays had been sucked from him and he had nobody to thank for that but himself.
He cast one last look at the locked trunk, thought to himself that he rather deserved it for having become a common thief, if only for a moment, then left for breakfast.
He looked at the boy at the end of the table, then away again. He was taller than Orion but not by so much that he was obviously older, and his face was young still, but not as young as Orion's own. He was quite good-looking, actually, and very neat; just looking at him, which made him sit up straighter without meaning to. He caught himself doing it and felt very embarrassed about it, even though there was no-one to notice. The boy glanced up then, and caught him looking. Orion looked away at once and stared very hard at his potatoes. He could feel his face going red. He waited a long moment, long enough for it to hopefully not be red anymore, and looked up again, but the boy had already looked away. He was eating again, very calmly, as if nothing had happened. He didn't seem embarrassed about catching Orion staring, or even particularly annoyed, which Alderton would have been. Alderton would have made a thing of it. This boy just went on eating. He sneaked a look at Walburga. She was eating tidily and reading something, too, though hers was a much thicker book than the boy's, and it wasn't propped open on the table but held up in one hand while she ate with the other. He looked at the boy again. The boy wasn't looking at him this time. He was looking at his book, and he didn't look up again for the rest of dinner, not that Orion could see, though he didn't stare at him the entire time. It would have been too obvious. He just looked, now and then, because the boy was odd – there was something about him that was odd, something Orion couldn't put his finger on, except that it was in the way he sat. His posture. Other people sat however they sat, kind of slouched over their dinner or leaning on their elbows or with one leg tucked under them, but this boy was very straight-backed, very deliberate about where he put his arms and how he held his fork. He looked like he was performing eating. Which was a very strange thing to think about someone eating, and Orion told himself to stop it. He had to go and sit somewhere else and think about this properly, and the dormitory wasn't the right place for that, with its four neat empty beds and his own unmade one, so he went back up to the common room. He had been looking forward to the common room, because of this morning, and the armchairs, and the fire, but the boy from dinner was in one of the armchairs when he got there. He was still reading. Orion stopped in the entrance, hand still on the cold wall, and thought about going back to the dormitory after all. But then the boy looked up, in that same even way he'd done in the Great Hall, and Orion's hand came off the wall on its own. 'Sorry,' Orion said, without really knowing why he was apologising. The boy looked at him for a moment, then went back to his book without saying anything, which Orion supposed meant he could come in. He came in. He sat in one of the other armchairs – not directly across from the boy, because that was too close – and looked at the fire, which was going very well tonight. Someone must have built it up recently. He didn't think it was the boy, because he looked very settled, like he hadn't moved in a long while. Maybe one of the professors had done it. He sat for a few minutes, and then he thought about his essay, and his letter, and the fact that his parchment and quill and ink and everything were in his trunk which wouldn't open, and that he was just going to have to sit here and do nothing all holiday with nothing to do it with, which was not how he had planned for any of this to go at all. He looked at the boy. He had a stack of things on the small table beside him: a book, yes, but also parchment, and a quill, and an ink bottle. He was clearly working on something, or planning to, even if he was reading right now. Orion looked at these things for a while. Then he looked back at the fire. Then back at the things. Orion decided he was going to say something. He was going to say hello, at least, or ask his name. That was what people did, wasn't it, when they met someone? Even Walburga, who didn't seem to like talking to people at all, had said hello to him. He had all of Christmas ahead of him and so did this boy, and they were both Slytherin and it made sense they should at least know each other's names. He opened his mouth. He closed it again. He opened it. He was going to have to ask. He knew he was going to have to ask. He was going to have to say words to this boy he had never spoken to before, this third-year (he was pretty sure, now, he was a third-year) with the straight back and the strange way of eating, and ask him if he could borrow some of his things. He would just have to do it. It wouldn't be hard. You just opened your mouth and said words and it was fine, and even if the boy said no, he would just – well, he would just not have parchment, and he would sit here all holiday and do nothing, and that was fine too, that was absolutely fine, except that it really wasn't. He opened his mouth and said, 'Excuse me,' and it came out rather smaller than he'd intended, but the boy heard it, because he looked up. 'Could I borrow some parchment? And, and a quill, if you have a spare. And some ink. I've got – my trunk isn't opening. I've got all my things in there and it's not –' He stopped. He'd been about to explain the whole thing, about the goo and the latch and Alderton and the rest of them, and he didn't need to explain all of that to get some parchment. He cleared his throat. 'Could I borrow some?' he finished. The boy looked at him for a moment, the same even, considering look as before. Then he reached into the stack of things beside him and held out a sheet of parchment and a spare quill. The ink bottle he set on the arm of his own chair, angled slightly towards Orion, which he supposed meant he could reach over for it when he needed it. 'Thank you,' Orion said. He meant it very much. He sat down on the floor in front of the fire, which he preferred to the armchair for writing, and he started with the letter to Lucretia, because that was easier than the essay. He wrote her all about the carriages leaving, because she'd been gone before he'd got outside, so she couldn't have seen them, and about having the common room to himself, and sleeping in the armchairs, though he didn't tell her about the trunk. He didn't know exactly why he didn't tell her. He supposed it was the same reason he hadn't told Slughorn, or written home about any of the rest of it. He just wrote that he was all right and that he hoped her journey home was fine and that she was to enjoy Christmas. He nearly wrote that he missed her – which he did, a bit, or maybe more than a bit, if he was honest – but he crossed it out and wrote something else instead, because it seemed like too much. And then he wrote at the bottom that he was sorry for not telling her sooner, about staying, and that he should have, and that he hoped she wasn't too cross about it. He sealed it and put it aside to send tomorrow, and thought about starting his essay, and wrote his name at the top of a fresh piece of parchment, and 'History of Magic', and 'The Goblin Rebellions of the Seventeenth Century', and then he sat and looked at it for a while, and discovered he didn't know where to start, because all his notes were in his trunk and he couldn't remember off the top of his head what order things had happened in. He was almost sure he could remember enough for an introduction, but he wasn't sure where the introduction ended and the first part of the essay began. He chewed the end of the quill and stared into the fire. The boy across from him turned a page. Orion wrote half a sentence, decided it was wrong, crossed it out, wrote half of it again, and then sat back and decided he would think about it more tomorrow when he wasn't tired, and when he maybe had his notes. He still thought he'd find a way to sort the trunk out tomorrow. It couldn't be all that complicated. There had to be something. He realised, when he looked over at the boy to hand back his quill, that the boy had written quite a lot. More than Orion had expected, actually; the parchment he was working on was nearly full, and it was not a short essay. His handwriting was very neat. Orion handed the quill back and said thank you again, and the boy took it and said 'you're welcome' in a polite, even voice, and went back to writing. Orion sat for another little while and then decided he was tired enough to sleep, and went to the dormitory, and fell asleep very quickly for the first time in months. He got up and went over to it and tried the latch before he had even really thought about doing it, which was a stupid thing to do because nothing about the situation had changed between last night and now, and indeed the latch did not move, and the goo was still there, very black and very sticky, and he got it on his finger again before he could stop himself. He wiped it on his robes – these were yesterday's robes because he hadn't been able to get to anything else – and now there was a third mark on them, much bigger than the first two, and his finger was black and he could not get it off. He tried rubbing it on the stone floor and it helped a very little. Then he tried on the bedpost and that helped a very little more. He stood up and went around the dormitory pulling open every drawer and looking under every bed in the vague hope that some of his things might have been left out, because maybe they hadn't put everything in the trunk before they did whatever they did to it, maybe they had been in too much of a hurry. But there was nothing. Nothing anywhere except for a small pile of sweets that he found under Burke's bed, which had obviously been dropped there and forgotten. He looked at the sweets for a moment. He took them. He felt immediately terrible about it, which made it worse that he then sat on his bed and ate them anyway, one by one, staring at the wall. They were very good sweets. He had Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, which he liked a lot, and he blew a bubble that made it all the way up to the ceiling before it popped and left gum everywhere, and he spent quite a long time picking the residue off the canopy above his bed because he felt he had to. The other sweets were the kind that made sparks come out of your ears. He ate several of these and sat on his bed watching the sparks fizzle out in the air and feeling horrible about himself. He deserved it, of course. He deserved all of it – the trunk and the goo and his disgusting robes and stealing some other boy's sweets like some kind of horrible little rat. If he had just gone to Slughorn when this all started, his trunk would be open right now and he wouldn't need to go around stealing anyone's Drooble's. He had brought this entirely on himself. The fact that he had been trying to avoid making things worse was no excuse. Blacks didn't make excuses. He was fully aware of how his father would put it, and his father would be right. He looked down at his robes. There were three black marks on them now, and a smear from where he'd wiped his hands after the Burke's-sweets business, and he had tried rubbing that off but it had just smeared further. He looked, he thought, absolutely dreadful. He looked like he'd been in some sort of horrible accident. And Walburga would see him like this if he went to breakfast, and she would say something, he was almost completely certain she would say something, because she was not the sort of person who didn't say something when she thought something needed to be said, and then he would have to explain it – the trunk, and the goo, and why he hadn't told anyone, and all the rest of it – and he couldn't do that. He couldn't explain any of that. Not to her. Not right now. He lay back down on the bed and looked up at the canopy he had just finished picking gum off of The Great Hall in the morning was different again from the Great Hall at dinner. It was bright; the enchanted ceiling showed a grey morning sky, and pale light came in through the high windows on either side, and the candles that floated overhead were less noticeable for it. There were two professors at the teachers' table, including Dumbledore again, and there was one student at the Slytherin table. The same boy from last night. Orion had seen him before he sat down and had a moment of wondering whether to sit at the same end of the table as him, which he had not done at dinner because dinner had caught him off guard. He decided the same logic applied now, and sat in the same spot as yesterday. He served himself porridge and ate it slowly. He kept telling himself he was going to go to Slughorn's office after breakfast, and he kept believing himself for a minute or two and then stopping believing himself again. He thought about Lucretia's advice, which had been about not sulking in his dormitory, and about being near other people even if he didn't talk to them. He looked at the boy at the end of the table, who was eating toast and also reading something again. The boy glanced up from his notes and looked at Orion, and didn't look away immediately, and Orion thought, with a kind of helpless inevitability, that he was going to have to say something now or never. He pushed his porridge to one side. He said, 'What are you reading?' His voice came out a bit strange, because he hadn't used it yet this morning. He cleared his throat. The boy looked at him for a moment, in a way that made Orion feel like he was being read as quickly and efficiently as a parchment, and then he said, 'Notes. I'm reviewing them.' 'I'm Orion Black.' 'I know,' said the boy, without looking up. 'How do you know?' 'I pay attention,' said the boy. 'Tom Riddle,' he said. He didn't look up again, but there was something in the way he said it that wasn't quite unfriendly – not warm, exactly, it wasn't warm, but it wasn't a dismissal either. More like a door that wasn't open and wasn't shut. After breakfast, he went up to the library on his own. Madam Brumley wasn't there; she'd obviously gone for the holidays like everyone else, but the library was unlocked, because it always was, and he went in and found the section with History of Magic texts and pulled a few he thought would be useful and sat down at a table near the window and started working through them. It was very quiet. He had the whole library to himself and he could sit wherever he wanted, at the big window tables that all the older students claimed, and he did, and it was good, actually. He liked the library. He'd always liked libraries, which was another thing that was apparently wrong with him; in his experience boys were not supposed to enjoy libraries unless they were revising, but Orion genuinely just liked them, the smell and the quiet and the way all the information just sat there waiting on the shelves. He wandered around looking at the shelves just as he always did when he got tired of writing, which Madam Brumley never allowed him to do during term because she said he looked like he was up to something, even though he wasn't, he was just looking. He found a book on magical botany that seemed interesting and took it back to his table and read most of it by the time the light through the windows had gone grey and thin and he realised it was getting on towards dinner. He pushed the library door open and stood in the entrance. It was empty, more or less. There were lamps on along the shelves, soft and golden, and outside the windows the sky had gone completely dark, and it was very warm and still in the way rooms were when they'd been quiet for a long time. The only person in it was not Walburga. It was the boy from dinner, sitting at a table in the middle of the room, surrounded by a very neat arrangement of books. He had several open in front of him and one in his hand, and he was reading it with a focused expression, and he didn't look up when Orion came in. He hadn't looked up at dinner for a long time either, Orion remembered, and then when he had, he'd been very calm about it. He seemed like a person who was calm about most things. Orion went to the shelves and began looking for A History of Magic, running his finger along the spines. He wasn't sure this was the right section. He moved along, still reading spines, very quietly, because it seemed wrong to make noise in the library when it was this still and there was one other person in it being quiet. He found a history section eventually and pulled a thick volume from the shelf and took it to a table – a table far enough away from the boy not to be intrusive, but not so far it was odd; he just picked a middle table, without thinking about it too much, because he was prone to thinking about things like this far too much, and it wasn't worth it. He opened the book. He didn't have any parchment, or Walburga's quill. He'd left them in the common room. He sat and looked at the open book and thought that perhaps the library could just be something he did for a while, and that the essay didn't necessarily have to happen tonight. He read a bit. The book wasn't A History of Magic, it was something else, something called The Pureblood Codices: Lineage and Custom in the British Wizarding World, which sounded very like the sort of book his grandparents would give him, and was not exactly what he was after, but he read it anyway because it was there and it was something to do. He read two pages about the founding of certain wizarding families and found himself thinking about dinner instead, and about the boy, and whether he went home for Christmas normally, and whether this was the first time he'd stayed. He hadn't been at the school long enough to know which students stayed and which didn't in previous years, because he'd only been here since September. Walburga said she always stayed. Was this always, or was this just this year? He glanced over at the boy, who hadn't moved or looked up. He was still reading his book with the same focused expression, and there were still a lot of other books open around him, and they were open to specific pages, which meant they were for something. He was working. Doing something particular. At Christmas, in the library, by himself, with lamps and his books, looking like this was just a perfectly ordinary thing to be doing, and perhaps it was, for him, Orion didn't know anything about him. He was putting his things away when he realised he could hear someone else in the library. He looked up slowly, not wanting to seem like he was staring, and through the shelves he could make out the third-year from lunch. He was deep in the Restricted Section, which you weren't supposed to be able to get into without a signed note, except he was in there, and he didn't seem at all bothered by this, and Orion looked away again very quickly and gathered his things and left. He thought about it all the way back down to the common room, and by the time he got there, Walburga was at the fire, and before he could think too hard about whether she'd want him to talk to her, he said, 'Who is Tom Riddle?' She didn't look up. 'The one who was in the Great Hall at lunch. With the book.' He paused. 'He was in the Restricted Section just now.' She did look up at that, just briefly. Then she looked back at her book and said, 'Tom Riddle ...' and said his name the way you might say something you were still making up your mind about. 'Yes. Is he — should I not—' 'Just leave him alone,' she said. Not a warning, exactly. More like advice she expected him to take. 'why?' 'let's say Salazar Slytherin is spinning in his grave.' she said Orion looked at her. He had a feeling he knew what she meant, but — 'Is he — ' he stopped, because he was aware this was perhaps not something to say loudly, even in an empty common room. He lowered his voice anyway. 'Is he a Mudblood?' 'Yes,' she said, with a sneer that made her look suddenly very like her mother. 'Came from a Muggle orphanage.' She said this the way she said most things that disgusted her, flatly, like the disgust was so obvious it barely needed the expression to go with it. 'And Sorted into Slytherin. You couldn't make it up.' Orion felt the same disgust settle in him, easy and familiar as anything he'd been raised with. A Mudblood in Slytherin. He thought about sitting at the same table as him at lunch and felt his skin crawl. 'That's revolting,' he said. Walburga looked at him. 'I don't go near him,' she said. 'I'd advise you to do the same. He's not — ' She stopped, and seemed to decide something. 'Just don't,' she said. 'He's not worth the trouble and I don't trust him. There's something off about him. There's been something off about him since first year.' 'He keeps to himself. If you don't bother him, he won't bother you.' 'All right,' said Orion. He went back to the dormitory and lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling and listened to the nothing for a while, and it was odd – the nothing. During term the dormitory was never nothing. There were always at least two or three of the other boys still awake, talking loudly, or throwing things, or just breathing very audibly, the way Bulstrode did. Orion hadn't known, before this, how much noise other people made just by being there. He hadn't noticed. Now it was just him, and it was so quiet he could hear himself think quite clearly, and he wasn't always sure that was something he wanted. Ch 1: 21 dec Ch 2: 21 dec Ch 3: 22 dec Ch 4: 23 dec Ch 5: 24 dec Ch 6: 25 dec Ch 7: 25 dec Ch 8: 25, 26 dec Ch 9: 26, 27 dec Ch 10: 28 dec Ch 11: 29 dec Ch 12: 30 dec Ch 13: 31 dec Tuesday Ch 14: 31 dec, 1 jan Ch 15: 1, 2, 3 jan Ch 16: 4 jan, 5 jan Ch 17: 5 jan Ch 18: 5 jan