Tom Riddle, age five, had been left—abandoned, in the crude terminology of lesser minds—at a place called a day care. The word itself was insulting, as though he required tending like a fragile houseplant. Harry had promised it was for only a few hours, a single day at most, and Tom, in his most rational mind, knew it was not abandonment. Harry would never do that. The very idea was laughable. And if he ever did—if such a betrayal could exist in the same world as Harry—then the consequences would be… well, nothing short of catastrophic. There would be no world left for Harry to come back to.

Still, knowing all this did not make the day care any less unbearable. Tom sat in the farthest corner, the one nearest the bookshelf, his small body folded neatly into the space as if the shadows themselves had made room for him. His cheeks retained the faint curve of babyhood, soft and pale, a deceptive mask over the sharper architecture already forming beneath. His dark hair fell neatly around his face, and his eyes—those strange, unreadable eyes—remained fixed on the book in his lap.

The other children had noticed him the moment he arrived. At first, a few had approached, drawn in by his delicate features and the way he seemed so self-contained. But each time, they slowed before reaching him, their smiles faltering for reasons they could not name. A nervous glance, a sudden coldness in the air, the prickle of unseen eyes watching from inside him—it was enough to send them back to the plastic toys and crayons in the center of the room.

Tom did not mind. In fact, he preferred it. From his quiet post, he watched them all, cataloguing their flaws with the same calm precision he might use to sort books by height. That one’s hair was sticking up in an undignified cowlick. Another’s nose was perpetually running. One girl chewed the ends of her braids like a cow with cud. They were loud, graceless things, all of them, spilling juice and screaming over painted blocks. He considered them a waste of oxygen and even worse company.

The adults were no better. The one assigned to oversee the chaos—Miss Cartwright—was a tall, harried woman with a singsong voice that made Tom’s skin itch. She had made a few brave attempts to draw him into the “group activities,” her thin smile stretched in what was clearly supposed to be encouragement. Tom had looked at her once, with all the cold contempt he could summon from behind his still-soft features, and she had not tried again. Now she busied herself with the others, her occasional glance toward him more out of obligation than hope.

The air around Tom seemed to discourage intrusion. It wasn’t that he was openly hostile—he didn’t snarl or glare. It was subtler, a strange, unnatural quiet that seemed to pool around him. Children who passed too close felt uneasy, even if they didn’t understand why, and adults found themselves unconsciously avoiding his eyes. The result was perfect isolation, which suited him fine.

He turned the pages of his book with deliberate care, the paper whispering faintly under his fingertips. The story itself was beneath him—a simple tale about talking animals and their petty troubles—but it was better than engaging with the human livestock that filled the room. All the while, his mind ticked on, sharp and calculating, considering Harry. Harry, who would come for him. Harry, who was the only person worth speaking to, the only person whose absence left a true ache in his chest.

This was hell, certainly, but not the eternal kind. Harry would return, and until then, Tom would wait. He would bide his time among the fools and the fearful, hidden in the corner like a prince in exile, his soft little hands holding the book as if it were a scepter. And when Harry came, Tom would rise from this wretched place without so much as a glance backward, leaving it all behind like the nothing it was.