1st September
“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
- Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Platform 9 ¾ was a hum of activity, and Tom could feel the thrill of it all down to his marrow.
He stood on the busy platform, starstruck by the gleaming train; the Hogwarts Express. Steam billowed up and out from the richly coloured red and black locomotive like breath on a cold day. Luggage floated in and out of the open doors of the carriages as parents helped their children get settled, owls hooted from gleaming cages carried by students ready for another school year, and children ran on and off the train and poked their heads out windows waving goodbye to their families.
The same magic he felt at Diagon Alley was here on this platform secreted away in grubby King’s Cross. He hadn’t so much as flinched when he reached the brick wall that separated the magic from the muggle. He knew he belonged here. Today was the start of the life he was meant to have.
But as he watched the witches and wizards that crowded the platform, families kissing their children goodbye, friends clapping each other on the back, or grasping hands and squealing with delight after a summer apart, Tom smoothed down his hair nervously, and made sure the especially scuffed side of his trunk was facing his body and tried to suppress the embarrassed flush he felt rise as he grabbed the cracked leather handle.
‘You belong here. More than anyone else.’
He straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. 'You belong here. More than anyone else.’
He scanned the busy platform and told himself he wasn’t looking for a dark head of hair and gap toothed mouth. But if he was, it was only because she was familiar. And she wasn’t always a bore.
Through the sea of silk and velvet robes, feathers, suitcases, and vapour trails of magic, Tom saw her. She was standing with a decidedly elegant looking woman and the sister he recognized from Hyde park and for a moment, Tom felt terribly embittered as visions of the life he should have swirled beyond his grasp. A family full of magic and that easy confidence of knowing you don’t just belong, but you shape the world.
Swallowing down his resentfulness and his childish daydreams, Tom debated whether he would go over to the girl who had everything he wanted. He was drawn- drawn to the world she represented and the knowledge she gave so freely, but felt nearly sick at the thought of looking like he needed anything else from her, like he relied on her. As he made up his mind to slip past her, he didn’t need her help anymore, she turned her head as if she could feel his eyes on her. Her dark eyes looked straight into his own and he watched her lips curl into a slow, easy smile. Ixchel wiggled her fingers in greeting and beckoned him over, and despite his plans from not moments ago, Tom found himself stiffly walking over to the girl.
He stood with his cracked and faded case and nodded slightly at Ixchel, smoothing his features into a polite, false smile as her mum looked his way.
“Hi, Tom.” Ixchel grinned, “Exciting day, no?”
He felt a flutter he couldn’t suppress at just what this day meant to him, and a genuine smile tugged at the corner of his mouth for the briefest of moments.
“I’m glad you found the platform,” The older girl said to him. Ixchel’s sister. Her features were more angular than her younger sister’s and the silk neckerchief at her throat was crimson and gold. ‘Gryffindor colours’ he thought. “Ixchel was about to go looking for you on the muggle side. Then she’d miss the train for sure and I’d hate to miss her hatstall.”
Tom wasn’t sure what to do with this teasing and stood uneasily, his false visage back in place.
Ixchel rolled her eyes and stepped closer to Tom. “Ignore Socorro please. She has a terrible habit of thinking she’s funny.”
Ixchel’s mum - the elegant woman in richly embroidered robes - looked between Ixchel and Tom “Oh mija, is this your amiguito?” She crooned, and Ixchel looked discomfited, an expression that seemed strange on her normally composed face, and colour rushed to her cheeks.
“Tom, this is my mum. Mum, this is Tom Riddle.”
Tom offered his hand to the dark haired woman who swiftly ignored his outstretched hand to instead press a kiss to each cheek. Ixchel sheepishly stood next to the disgruntled boy, and mouthed an apology.
“Ah, Tom! Ixchel’s first school friend. Ixchel has told me you’ve just recently discovered your heritage.”
He could feel his shoulders tensing and his back straightening, ready to be dismissed, waiting for dark eyes so similar to Ixchel’s own to slide over him with disinterest, or worse, pity, before ignoring him. Ignoring someone beneath her.
“It is so lovely to meet you. Please write to the house if you need anything, new places can be confusing.” She said this with the sincerity of someone who knew from experience.
Feeling stunned, exposed, and a bit dubious, Tom simply nodded and murmured “Thank you, Mrs Eztli.” He noted to himself he had no intention of doing so even if the offer was genuine.
A whistle from the train rang out and Ixchel’s mum glanced at the large clock over the platform. “Alright lovelies, off you go!” She hugged her daughters and peppered kisses across their faces. “Owl me no later than this weekend, I mean it.”
“Bye, Mama!” The older Gryffindor girl, Socorro chirped, and Ixchel gave her mother a placid smile and she gripped her case.
As they stepped into the train, Tom felt the fluttering in his stomach return. Hogwarts .
The train was just as busy as the platform with students darting between compartments, searching for friends and empty seats, and Tom noted just how unextraordinary they seemed. They brayed at jokes he half heard, and spoke of the mundane things they had done over the summer. They seemed no different from the other children at Wool’s; merely dressed in robes rather than the scratchy uniforms of the orphanage, and Tom could feel distaste mingling with his anxiety and anticipation.
In what Tom supposed was a sisterly act, Socorro asked if they wanted to join her compartment where a collection of older students sat, chatting noisily. She stood with an easy confidence in front of the compartment door, and gestured for the two of them to follow her.
Before Tom could think of a way to vocalise the “No!” racing through his head, Ixchel met his eyes.
“We’re okay Coco, we’ll get our own.” She demurred.
“Suit yourself,” Socorro shrugged. “Good luck tonight.”
Ixchel rolled her eyes, but there was no real heat to it before ambling out into the carriage corridor looking for seats. She sat down by the window after finding an empty compartment and gave Tom a rueful grin who still stood in the corridor.
“Don’t feel like you have to sit with me. I do like your company though.” She rustled through her bag and pulled out a book.
Tom hesitated only a moment before taking a seat across from her.
She smiled softly into her book and the sounds of the other students dulled as their door slid shut.
“Socorro is great - and don’t you go telling her I said that - but we’re rarely interested in the same things. She tries to escape the second I bring up magic theory, and you couldn’t pay me to follow any sport, or to look for knarls and bowtruckles.” She pointed to a paragraph of her book she knew Tom would be interested in and held it out for him to read. “So I’m glad you humour me.”
Tom looked over the passage and commented that the theory was quite similar to something he had read in one of the books he had purchased in Diagon Alley. He reflexively patted the pocket of his trousers where his wand, his wand! was stored.
He could hear students still running through the train corridor, and a few older boys opened their compartment door, in a heated discussion on whether Vera Edevane or Cecily Slora was the fittest Hufflepuff in their year. They saw the two firsties and quickly moved on to find an empty compartment.
“Everyone seems so ordinary.” Tom found himself saying.
Her smile was lovely but heavy. “You’re right.”
The train began to move and his heart skipped a beat.
To Hogwarts.
As he sat, greedy for what awaited him, Tom opened his mouth to ask more questions of his unwavering source of information. But she was looking out the window, waving goodbye to her mum.
Tom had no one in which to wave his goodbyes.
He stewed for a bit as the train rocked slowly and the grey smog and brick buildings of the city became the green hills and farms of the countryside.
He was both envious and covetous, Tom decided in a rare moment of self-reflection. She gave so freely, and she was the one. The girl who had told him the truth the moment she saw him. Had seen in him what he knew was there all along. But she had everything he wanted as well, and the conflict made him bitter and spiteful.
Tom knew he was a jealous creature. He had been told by Mrs Cole more times than he could count that it was one of his many sins on the long list of his wickedness.
“Why wasn’t your father at the platform? Too busy for you? Or too dead?”
Anger flashed across Ixchel’s face, before the girl smoothed her expression and raised a brow, “I can see your tact probably hasn’t helped you get adopted.” She baldly volleyed.
Tom grit his teeth and didn’t say anything.
The sound of the trolley lady broke the tension, and Ixchel sighed, ordering an assortment of wizarding sweets Tom didn’t know the names of and she unspokenly gave him half in armistice.
She opened a small package and a chocolate frog leapt from the wrapping, and she smiled gently at the display of magic she must have seen dozens of times previously, before catching it and taking a small bite.
“I don’t have a father.”
“You don’t have a father?”
“No.”
“Everyone has a father.”
“Well yes,” she rolled her eyes, “I know about the birds and the bees, Tom. It’s just... I know who he is- everyone does, it’s just, he has his own family. His real one. An English one.”
She sounded guarded, and Tom scoffed and opened his own chocolate frog. As if he would mock her for being a bastard when he didn’t even have one parent and almost told her as much.
“Well, don’t you miss him?” He asked. It was too personal, and he regretted asking immediately. The question was awkward on his tongue.
She finished her treat, and pushed the wrapper away. “How can I miss someone that I don’t know?”
Tom chewed his chocolate, the first sweet he had since Ixchel had bought them ice cream that August afternoon and it tasted all the sweeter for it. He thought of the father he dreamt was looking for him. He knew all about missing someone he did not know.
Ixchel lay in her new bed, the curtains drawn and listened to the sound of her own breathing. She thought to herself how this was the first night she’d fall asleep without the sounds of the ocean in her ears.
It was still light when they had arrived at the station, though the sun hung low in the sky.
The train had rocked to a lazy stop and the flutter of excitement she felt in her belly was mirrored in Tom’s eyes and his quick start out of his seat. “Come on!” He rushed her out, and Ixchel could only hope she looked half as confident as Tom who stood in the corridor, waiting for the carriage doors to open.
She gave a light laugh and swallowed down her nerves, letting herself be buoyed by the excited chatter and flurry of activity of the other students streaming out of their seats, waiting to catch a glimpse of Hogwarts, and as the doors opened her new classmates poured from the Hogwarts Express, a gruff voice belonging to a rather outdoorsy looking man called out “Firsties, follow me! This way please!” She caught the eye of Socorro who waved to her sister as she walked with her friends to the strange horseless carriages waiting for the older students. Dragging her eyes away from her sister, Ixchel followed the crowd of her fellow first years as they were ushered down a narrow path to a miniature fleet of little moored boats on the edge of a glassy smooth lake.
“Get a load of that!” Someone breathed. Settled atop a high mountain on the other side of the lake was a vast castle with many turrets and towers. It was huge and rambling, with a jumble of towers and battlements, its multitude of windows sparkling.
She could see that Tom was well ahead of her now, already standing by a boat and looking determinedly ahead of him at the castle before them. As she looked at the resolute boy distanced from her, Ixchel wondered if this was the end of their hesitant friendship. He had arrived where he belonged and he no longer needed her as a tether, as the bridge from the muggle to the magic. She felt the tinge of sadness at the prospect but like she had told him in Diagon Alley, she already knew. There was something dark and grasping, proud, and lonely about him and even at eleven she didn’t know how long she could follow.
But he turned around as if looking for her, and when their eyes met he stood by a boat until she arrived and he wordlessly boarded; she knew she would follow for now.
By the time their escort - the gamekeeper, Ogg - had corralled everyone onto the boats and declared them fit to set off, the sun had begun to set and the pinky orange sky mirrored itself onto the lake, making it appear as if they were rowing through the sky itself. A redheaded boy a few boats ahead touched the surface of the lake and an enormous purple tentacle slid playfully under his hand, just barely not breaking the surface tension. They all gasped at the sighting, and hands were tucked firmly back into the boats onto their laps.
The boats carried them through a heavy curtain of ivy which hid a wide opening in the cliff face. They drifted along a dark tunnel, and their journey ended in an underground harbour. They were led through a staggeringly large entrance hall, the ceiling too high to make out, and their whispers to each other echoed off the stone walls and floor. Ixchel tried to catch Tom’s eye, but his gaze drank in the castle around them.
A tall, thin man with an auburn beard and twinkling eyes stood in a wonderfully eccentric robe of deep blue scattered with silver moons and stars, seemingly waiting for them.
“Thank you, Ogg.” The man spoke serenely, before casting his twinkling eyes on the nervous group of first years before him.
“Hello, all,” he smiled at each child, though Ixchel could have sworn his smile took a more subdued air upon seeing Tom. “Welcome to Hogwarts, I’m pleased you are all here. I am Professor Albus Dumbledore, Deputy Headmaster, Head of Gryffindor House, and I will be your Transfiguration Professor. The start-of-term banquet is about to proceed. But first, you will be sorted into your houses. Each house has its own noble history, though I am partial to Gryffindor,” he said with a twinkle, earning nervous laughs and grins, “and I believe you will all be a credit to the house in which you are sorted.”
He led them to the entryway of the Great Hall, and Ixchel could hear the voices of the others years carry through the doors. The muggleborn children or those with particularly malicious older siblings who had made up a wild tale about what sorting entailed looked especially nervous.
Ixchel hid the wringing of her hands under the sleeves of her robes.
As the doors opened, the Great Hall opened before them. Hundreds of candles were floating midair above the four imposing tables and the ceiling reflected the sherbet coloured sky outside. It was such a place of magic she paused and couldn’t help her covert peek at the other’s reactions.
A voice from the hat she had not even noticed rang out.
"Oh at this school of magic
I was spelled right here
To guide you towards the house you’re meant
For all this time of year
To the mighty house of Gryffindor
Are claimed the brave and bold
If nerve and daring lay in heart
You’ll be wearing red and gold
Strong is the house of Hufflepuff
Where temperaments are royal
To be counted as their friend, a blessing
A Hufflepuff: diligent and loyal
With fair Ravenclaw you do belong
If knowledge is what you’re yearning
The quick of mind, with wit so sharp
For here, you’re always learning
Proud Slytherin may be your place
If you are cunning and ambitious
Though allies are not always friends
Your future looks auspicious
So place me snug upon your head
And I’ll see what’s in your mind
As well as your heart; values too
And place you there amongst your kind!”
Their names were then called, starting with a sandy haired boy named Bernard Abbott who after only a moment, was placed with Gryffindor with a resounding cheer.
As their names were called and the first years sorted with varying speed, Ixchel looked out onto the sea of older Hogwarts students and caught Socorro waving at her enthusiastically. She gave a smile and an embarrassed wave in return.
“Eztli, Ixchel!”
Startled, Ixchel gave a small jump and made her way to the stool, sitting gingerly. She kept her gaze up, looking at the students before her until the hat was placed on her head and covered her sight in dark fabric. She heard only the sound of her own breathing and her pulse in her ears.
“Hello, dear.” Said a small voice in her ear after some time. “Ah, such a canny mind. Very cunning and exacting. Eager to learn and invent, aren’t you? Not too tricky I suppose. You would do well in either Sytherin or Ravenclaw.”
Ixchel’s gaze shot nervously to the Slytherin table even behind the veil of the battered hat.
“Hmm,” the hat picked up her hesitance and scanned her thoughts further, “oh yes, I suppose that would make things a bit tricky.”
“Ravenclaw!”
The hat left Ixchel’s head and she breathed a sigh of relief as she made her way to the heartily cheering Ravenclaw table. A first year girl with russet hair who had already been sorted into the house - Olethea Docherty, patted the space next to her and Ixchel slid into the seat with an easygoing smile.
“Do you think the professors ever place bets on the sorting?” Olethea joked, her warm Scottish burr prominent.
Ixchel gave a soft chuckle and she turned her eyes back to the sorting as they worked their way down through the alphabet of surnames, making room for the new Ravenclaw additions. She held her breath when Tom’s name was finally called and they gazes met as he walked to the chair.
She wasn’t even sure if the hat touched his head before it bellowed, “Slytherin!”