Scene Setting: London – Early Autumn Afternoon, a Market Near Amenda High School The air was crisp with the scent of turning leaves and distant rain. Stalls lined the narrow street, overflowing with ripe fruit, used books, flowers in tin buckets, and handmade trinkets. The market buzzed with life—laughter from schoolchildren, the calls of vendors, and the rumble of buses weaving through traffic.

Tom Riddle walked with purpose, yet unobtrusively, his dark cloak blending in among the swaying coats and scarves of passersby. He kept his chin slightly tilted down, eyes scanning every young face that passed. His expression was calm, but there was tension in his shoulders, precision in every step.

He approached a vendor and asked about the school—Amenda High. The man began to answer, but someone else spoke up first. A girl.

Tom turned.

She was standing just a few steps away, her uniform half-hidden beneath a long coat, her bag slung lazily over one shoulder. Dark hair pulled back. Clear eyes. Her presence struck him with an almost disorienting familiarity—a shape he remembered, not from photographs, but from memories half-buried in shadows.

There was something in the way she stood. Unafraid, open, helpful. And that voice—there was something about it, even in the first few words. It made his chest tighten before he could even register why.

She gestured toward a side street. Offered to show him the way.

He nodded, falling into step beside her.

He studied her as they walked. She was relaxed, unaware. She glanced around with the casual alertness of someone who knew these streets like home. She spoke easily. Her laughter came softly under the noise of the crowd.

And yet—

She looked like someone he’d known once. In another life.

At last, they stopped at the corner of the school gates.

He asked for her name.

And when she gave it—"Eli Smith"—he said nothing. But inside, a quiet calculation began.

The name was wrong. But the feeling wasn’t.*