Unsolvable Problem
Albus disliked watching the students board the train at the end of term that year. He disliked it every year, to some degree, but with the war it was so much worse than merely preferring the hubbub of term time to the unstructured emptiness of the summer. Armando somehow still could not grasp that the muggleborn - and indeed, some of the half blood - students were not going home to warded houses. He was an old friend in a way, and yet when it truly counted Albus always seemed to find that even Armando dismissed him for his common born roots rather than listening to something that might require him to adjust his opinions more than an iota. It was vexing. It was exhausting.
He watched Tom Riddle carry out his prefect duties of guiding younger students onto the train. The boy acted perfectly calmly, as though he were not aware that he would be once more in the path of the bombs by evening. Albus knew it to be an act because he had seen his expression when he came out of Armando’s office with the refusal note clenched in his fist. But Albus had been forbidden from arguing any further on the matter. Armando didn’t want to hear it. The Board of Governors didn’t want to hear it. And so Tom Riddle boarded the train with his peers, and did not go home to a warded manor house like most of his peers.
Albus watched the golden phoenix board the train after him and wondered what would happen when they reached their destination. And then he put the matter from his mind as much as he was able, because it was not a problem he could solve.