Chapter 1
It was fourth year and Abraxas Malfoy was trying to talk to Tom Riddle, a venture he hadn't deigned to do in the past despite their sharing a dorm room, and Riddle was ...distracted.
"Riddle. Riddle, please. I'd like you to tutor me in Ancient Runes. And Arithmancy."
Riddle flinched suddenly. What he said was: "I thought Prince was tutoring you."
"She's not in Ancient Runes and I cannot make head nor feet out of her explanations of math."
"Head nor tails," Riddle said, reflexively.
"What?" Malfoy looked at him with confusion.
"The expression is 'cannot make head nor tail of it'," Riddle explained, and then started, realizing exactly what he was saying and to whom. "That is, if you trust a humble Mudblood like myself."
"No, I must be confused trying to speak French," Abraxas reflected, although it seemed as if he'd ignored half of what Riddle said.
"What makes you think I can explain Arithmancy better than Prince?" Riddle asked instead of responding, tactfully. About all that could be said of the three of them is they aren't actual enemies. Hitherto, Malfoy had almost completely ignored Riddle, even when they occupied the same room and sat beside each other in History of Magic. Prince had actually partnered with him in potions for several years, until Avery had dipped Riddle's dried mallow blossoms in dittany as a prank and she apparently thought Riddle had tried to do something to create the poisonous fumes.
"Well, you haven't had private arithmancy tutoring," Malfoy said, as if that explained all of it.
"Neither has Prince," Riddle retorted. It was part of his mental file of information—she had said as much (though not specifically of arithmancy) in potions, and if he hadn't known she wasn't (but not her exact parentage that was such currency in Slytherin House), he would still have thought she was a half-blood.
"You can't expect me to believe that," Malfoy scoffed. "With her father—"
"What about her father?" Riddle ground out. He wasn't feeling very charitable towards his own absent, possibly dead father, and Abraxas' frequent adulation of Mr. Malfoy did not exactly endear him to the orphan.
"Lord Prince is—I mean, he published in the arithmantical journal and everyone says it's very significant—"
Eileen Prince, whom neither of them had noticed walking up, pinched the bridge of her nose and rolled her eyes in annoyance. "Father only offered an 'update on the intellectual state of the continent'. He isn't an arithmancer proper, and he's not titled as yet."
Riddle narrowly avoided grumbling. He didn't want to care about people's fathers, and they were interrupting his sulking-cum-brainstorming over certain fatherless people being dispatched back off to London when it was being bombed and any families that could were sending their children up north.
"Fine, but Teager hasn't explained why modern arithmetic is so fundamental and you started talking about magical buildings when I asked."
"Modern arithmetic?" Riddle asked skeptically. He didn't remember that coming up in arithmancy, despite having read the book twice through this summer when it was the only thing he'd brought into the bomb shelter, and innocuous enough.
Prince said, without really explaining, "Teager was talking about codes when he said that. It's argued nowadays that you could probably imbue a code with magic, but the implications aren't clear."
"See, this is why I'm suddenly lost in what has been one of my best subjects. I don't know anything about codes."
"He's just..." Eileen waved her hand vaguely, "He's excited about the code thing. It's not actually relevant to the material and fine, yes, I suppose it's wildly confusing if you don't have the background on it, on modular arithmetic and the recent abstractions."
"Why would you imbue a code with magic?" Riddle suddenly asked, realizing he was intrigued.
"Because you can't do standard arithmancy without ... reference numbers." Eileen supplied, with a grimace.
"Standard arithmancy?" Abraxas objected. "Reference numbers are terribly important—you can't analyze spells without them. You couldn't even do arithmantical design of potions."
"But shouldn't the code have the same arithmantical result as the original ... text?" Riddle mused aloud, figuring he might as well join in on this conversation.
"That's... the part that isn't clear," Eileen sighed.
"It would have to, or else the code would have different magical properties," Malfoy argued, and flopped down onto the chair adjacent to the sofa Riddle was sprawled on.
Prince huffed. "That's exactly the tautology. It's not clear that the code does have the same magical properties. There's no principle as yet if magic correlates with ease of meaning."
Riddle shook his head as if to clear it. "I know that's not in the curriculum," he objected firmly.
"Shove over, Riddle, I want to sit down too," she said, and he reluctantly complied, wondering if she'd be willing to reassume their cordial acquaintance.
"Why in Merlin's pants is he talking about that, then?" Malfoy grumbled. "It almost smacks of Muggle influence," he added, like that was some sort of revelation.
Despite being the resident probable Mudblood, Riddle shrugged pointedly. "I don't know how Muggle stuff could've gotten into Arithmancy. Muggle schools don't teach that much before kids go to Hogwarts anyway."
Prince pinched her lips into a thin line.
But before she could say anything, they were interrupted—or at least Malfoy was.
"Malfoy!" Walburga Black yelled.
"What do you want, Wally?" Abraxas asked, stepping towards her.
"You owe me five galleons for our Quidditch bet." Walburga Black was not a comfortable person to be around, for Tom Riddle. She was perpetually louder than was compatible with propriety or comfort, and unlike Malfoy, whose lack of interaction and slight disdain seemed to stem as much from class and money as it did Riddle's lack of wizarding family (or at least he was, relatively, exceedingly polite about that if it did), she liked to point out that he was a Mudblood. Or at least she did it all the time.
"Impossible!" Abraxas scoffed.
"That's a technicality for you," Penny Goyle interjected as she entered the room, tossing a rolled up, gaily colored parchment, at Prince, her fellow gobstones team member.
"Technicality?" Malfoy queried—after all, he was as parsimonious about money as certain other miserly rich people in some circumstances.
Penny looked at him like he was an odd creature that had wandered into the dungeons. It reminded Riddle of Mrs. Cole. "Gryffindor's going to forfeit—can't field a seeker."
Eileen Prince could barely be persuaded to attend Quidditch games most times, but she nodded and remarked, "Murdoch got a concussion, so if McGonagall can't play, they're out."
Penny eyed both her and Riddle before doling out another juicy parcel of information, "Dippet saw McGonagall bleeding."
"Minnie? I thought she was tough enough to come back to play after an injury." Malfoy protested, as if scandalized despite the fact that it was the sportsman's (sportswoman's? sportsperson's?) honor of a two years younger member of a rival house he was apparently defending.
"It's a forfeit so you owe me," Walburga insisted again, and interposed herself between Malfoy and the sofa occupants.
Then there was a muffled explosion, one which Tom Riddle wasn't even remotely tensed for (as he was in potions class these days), and so he, well, went to pieces internally. It was probably a dungbomb, but there was some irritatingly mundane, primal part of his mind you couldn't tell that to. If he thought Prince would touch him, he might have grasped her hand from sheer sudden terror, and if he thought he'd have any privacy he'd go back to the dorm room, but as it was he had neither option.
To think that he could be incapacitated by a mere prank! Something had to change.