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Great and Terrible Things	By : TheRiddleHouse Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 2975 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I make no money from writing this fanfiction.

Chapter List
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CHAPTER FOUR
Ebony and Yew

1938

They were lying on their backs in the courtyard. Freshly-cut grass tickled Adriana’s bare legs, and she could smell spring rain in the air. The sky above was a wan sort of blue, and the fluffy clouds (which they were idly finding shapes in) appeared fat and grey, heavy water-bearers ready to spill at any moment.
“That one’s a wolf,” Adriana said, pointing upward. “Don’t you think?”
Tom shrugged. “I don’t see it. I don’t see anything but clouds.”
“That’s because you haven’t got any imagination,” she teased. “I’m bored. Let’s get out of here.”
“Fine with me,” he said.
Tom and Adriana left Wool’s, as they often did, and wandered the streets. Today they went down Vauxhall Road and stole bottles of milk from a horse-drawn cart. Adriana used her power to scale the nearest shop, a bakery, and took a seat on the roof. Tom followed her, and they sat side-by-side, legs dangling over the edge of the building. Passers-by below gaped up at them, and one plump, elderly lady with silver hair even called up, commanding them to climb back down.
Tom threw his empty milk bottle in her direction. The woman moved aside just in time to miss being hit, and the glass smashed on the cobblestones below. She huffed and cursed at him, then hurried on her way.
“You have a special way with people,” Adriana said.
“Why should I care what some old cat thinks of me?” he asked, sneering.
Adriana finished drinking her own milk, then scooted backward, toward the middle of the roof, so that the people on the street couldn’t see her. She concentrated on changing the shape of the bottle: it melted, like hot glass, except that it was still cool in her hands, and stretched out, becoming tall and skinny.
“Do it again,” Tom said, moving closer. He watched her with that hungry expression he so often wore when he saw something he wanted. “Make it fat this time.”
Adriana tried to transform the glass into a short, round shape, but suddenly she felt overwhelmed by her power. It welled up, seemed to fill every part of her with its potency, ready to burst from her like a storm from the rain-heavy clouds. She hugged herself, trying to hold everything in, but it was useless. There was a combustion of light and sound, she felt a great release of energy, and the milk bottle exploded into a thousand shining shards that flew in every direction.
Adriana was shivering, light-headed, and sick to her stomach. Emptied of her power as if someone had drained it from her. Tom stared, wide-eyed. Blood seeped from wounds on his cheeks and arms, where glass had cut him, and at the sight of all that red she panicked. Her breath came sharply, fast and staggered.
Not again, not again, not again…
“Are you—are you all right?” she asked, between gasps.
Tom wiped his face and examined his own crimson-stained hand. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m fine. But what was that?”
“I dunno,” she said, a half-truth. “I guess I pushed too hard.”
Tom looked at her like he didn’t quite believe her.
They returned to the orphanage, and Mrs. Cole had a fit over the state of Tom’s face. She ordered Martha and Jamie to clean him up, then rounded on Adriana, demanding to know what had happened. She was too shaken to think up a good lie, so she didn’t say anything.
Mrs. Cole sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, and said, “Just go.”
Adriana hurried upstairs, but instead of going to Room 29 she went to number 27 and climbed into Tom’s bed. She breathed in the clean scent of him that clung to his pillow and covered herself with the thin, grey blankets.
It had been a full year since an episode like this had happened, and Adriana closed her eyes against the memory of the last time she lost control. She’d thought it was over, these accidents, a part of her life forever locked away. Like the stuffed bear hidden under her bed (and why she’d brought the damn thing with her she couldn’t say). Like the pain of a leather belt biting her skin, the ache of hunger twisting her starving stomach. Pieces of the past that Adriana had hoped would never touch her again.

In the weeks after the incident with the milk bottle, Adriana avoided practicing her powers with Tom. But no sooner than the cuts on his cheeks and arms were healed, he was hounding her to levitate books and transform marbles and train mice to tap dance. So she relented, as she always did when it came to this, too tempted by her own abilities not to exercise them.
Summer arrived abruptly, and it seemed every flower petal and blade of grass in London wilted under the white-hot sun’s attention. A weatherman on the wireless reported that it was the hottest July in living memory, and Adriana felt inclined to believe him. She opened her window, trying to tempt a breeze inside, but it was fruitless. Apparently wind had disappeared for the season, same as rain. She tied back her long, unruly hair with a ribbon and was just on the verge of going to bother Tom, when someone knocked.
Adriana opened her door, and on the threshold of her room stood a tall, crooked-nosed man with smiling blue eyes. His flashy, plum-colored suit clashed spectacularly with his long auburn hair and beard. He was as ostentatiously out of place here in the colorless orphanage as an elephant on the streets of London.
“Who’re you?” she asked.
“I am Professor Dumbledore,” he said gently. “Might I join you for a moment?”
Wary, but curious about her visitor, Adriana stepped aside and said, “Yes.”
Professor Dumbledore took a seat in a hard-backed chair (one of the many purposefully uncomfortable pieces of furniture that populated the orphanage), and gestured for Adriana to sit on her bed. She did, if suspiciously, and asked, “Why are you here?”
“To tell you that you have a place at Hogwarts, the school where I teach, should you wish to take it.”
“Hogwarts? That’s a funny name,” she said. “And why would any school want me? I’m an awful student.” Though she’d learned to read under Tom’s tutelage, Adriana had missed too much early learning to ever write especially well, her spelling was nothing short of horrendous, and she found ciphering too dull to care about, if easy enough. Mr. Caulfield regularly promised to thrash her for not doing her homework—empty threats, those, which was all the better for him, as Adriana would never again suffer a whipping without putting up a fight.
“Hogwarts does not teach the sort of subjects you’re thinking of. It is not a school for learning reading or arithmetic,” said Professor Dumbledore. Here he paused and leaned conspiratorially close, as if about to reveal a most important secret. “Hogwarts is a school of magic.”
Magic? That seemed both wrong and right at the same time, and it made a perfect and horrible sort of sense. Finally, she had a name besides witchcraft for the ability that broke every natural law Adriana knew of. And yet, magic seemed too soft and kind a word to describe the awful things she and Tom could do. The awful things she had already done.
“So you’ll teach me how to handle my magic?” she asked. “How to keep me from hurting myself, or anybody else?”
The slightest frown line appeared between Professor Dumbledore’s eyebrows. “Have you used your magic to hurt people before?” he asked. His tone was firm, but not accusatory.
“Not on purpose,” Adriana said, “but sometimes I can’t help it.”
As much as she loved to use her power—no, her magic, she must remember—she knew that she did not, like Tom, always have perfect mastery over it. Sometimes magic rose up inside of her—like that day on the roof of the bakery—and she had to fight to keep it down, to keep it in, or else it might burst from her. This had started when she was five or six, not long after Mother began punishing her so harshly, and it often happened after a beating. Adriana had only suffered the one episode since coming to Wool’s over a year ago, but lately she could feel her magic almost boiling beneath her skin, dangerously eager to come out.
“That is not uncommon for inexperienced witches and wizards,” Professor Dumbledore said carefully. “And to answer your question, yes, your teachers at Hogwarts will, among other things, show you how to control your magic.”
“Then I would very much like to come,” Adriana said. “Have you already talked to Tom?”
“Yes, I have.” Professor Dumbledore smiled, but she thought there was something rather forcibly light about it. Perhaps his meeting with her friend had not gone very well.
Professor Dumbledore gave her a yellowed parchment envelope, its wax seal stamped in the shape of four animals framing a fancy letter H. She could make out a snake and a lion, but the other two figures were too indistinct for her to identify. Adriana broke the seal, and as she read over the letter inviting her to Hogwarts, Professor Dumbledore handed her a small leather purse full of coins and began explaining about the train to school, which she should catch from Platform 9 ¾ (she had to ask him to repeat that to believe it), and a place called Diagon Alley, where she would be able to find all of her supplies.
“I would be happy to take you today,” he said.
Adriana shook her head. “You haven’t got to. We can manage on our own.”
Professor Dumbledore looked at her oddly, half-appraising and half-concerned. “Why are you so sure that Tom refused my offer as well?”
She shrugged. “Because I know him.”
Professor Dumbledore held out his hand, which Adriana took after a moment’s hesitation. “Well then,” he said, “I shall see you again on the first of September.”

“I didn’t like him,” Tom said. “He set my wardrobe on fire! And he’s making me give back all my things.”
“You mean everyone else’s things,” Adriana said, and the corner of her mouth twitched like she was holding back a smile.
Tom frowned. “It isn’t funny. And we need to turn here. Dumbledore said the Leaky Cauldron’s right round this corner.”
There was a big bookshop, a grimy pub, a clothing store—Adriana grabbed his arm, stopping him, and said, “There, that’s it.”
He’d been expecting something larger and grander, a place worthy of housing the entrance to the magical world. Not a dirty old tavern that looked like it had seen its glory days a few centuries ago. Irritated and somewhat let down, Tom followed Adriana into the Leaky Cauldron. Perhaps it’s only bewitched to look like rubbish on the outside… His hope that the interior would be finer was quickly dashed. The pub was dimly lit, the furniture dilapidated, the floor in need of sweeping.
They approached the bartender, a robust man in his prime with thin brown hair, a long face, and rather prominent front teeth. He looks like a horse, Tom thought uncharitably.
“We need help getting through to Diagon Alley,” Adriana said.
“Ah, first-years,” said Tom-horseface. He smiled at them. “Follow me, then. Now where are your parents?”
“We’re orphans,” said Tom shortly.
“Oh… er, sorry.” He led them to a small, weedy courtyard and tapped the wall there three times with his wand. The last brick he’d touched shook in place, shivered, and a tiny hole appeared. It widened, grew larger and larger, like a great yawning mouth, until an archway stood before them. Tom hurried through it, away from the bartender who shared his name, onto a winding cobblestone lane.
The Leaky Cauldron may have been disappointing, but Diagon Alley was everything he could have hoped for and more. Shops lined the street, selling everything from cauldrons to owls to spellbooks. He saw barrells of beetle’s eyes, vials of dragon’s blood, quills that wrote by themselves, and all manner of strange beasts through the windows of the Magical Menagerie.
The people were no less foreign to Tom’s eyes, men and women dressed in antiquated clothes and long robes. One little witch in a pointed hat shepherded a passel of ginger-haired brats, complaining to nobody in particular about the cost of cauldrons this year. An old wizard walked by after her, wearing an outfit that would not have been out of place on an eighteenth century dandy. He was walking a perfectly ordinary jack russell terrier—or so Tom thought, until he got a look at the creature’s forked tail.
Adriana stopped at the apothecary to look at the unicorn horn on display by the door. Then she pointed to a store called Quality Quidditch Supplies, where a group of teenagers were huddled, staring through the window at—
“Flying broomsticks,” Adriana said. “Can you believe that?”
“Barely.” Tom pulled his school supplies list from his pocket and reread the items. Then he thought of Dumbledore, setting his wardrobe ablaze with a fire that didn’t burn. “Let’s get our wands before anything else.”
Finding the right place was easy enough. It was a skinny, sharp-eaved little shop, and the shiny gold letters across the top of the door proclaimed the Ollivander family wandmakers since before Christ was born, a claim Tom couldn’t quite swallow. He and Adriana stepped inside and discovered a spare space with no decoration, quiet and dark. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with boxes from floor to ceiling, giving the little shop a closed-in, claustrophobic feeling. Sunlight drifted in through the window, gilding motes of dust that were caught in its rays, so that they looked like glowing fireflies. To Tom’s surprise, Adriana took a seat in the lone chair and said, “You go first.”
He wasn’t about to argue. “All right.”
The proprietor stepped forward, a man in his late twenties with dark hair, a thin mouth, and silvery eyes near as pale as Adriana’s. “Morning,” said Ollivander. “Let’s get started, shall we?”
A tape measure floated over, unrolled itself, and spanned the distance between Tom’s left shoulder and the floor.
“Which is your wand arm?”
“My right,” Tom said, and the tape swiveled around to measure him from elbow to wrist, shoulder to fingertip, around his head, and about his chest. As it worked, Ollivander explained that each wand in his shop had its core made from either a phoenix feather, unicorn hair, or dragon heartstring.
“Which is the strongest?” Tom asked.
“Mm, depends upon what you mean by strength. Unicorn hairs are greatly resistant to the Dark Arts, phoenix feathers are the most difficult to tame—not unlike the creature they come from—and dragon heartstrings tend to be the most powerful.”
“I want one of them,” Tom said. “The dragon kind.”
Ollivander shook his head, snagged the tape measure from thin air, pocketed it, and began pulling narrow boxes from the shelves, seemingly at random. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Tom Riddle.”
“The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Riddle, not the other way around.” He handed Tom a wand and said, “Aspen and phoenix feather, twelve inches, rigid.”
He waved the wand in the precise manner he’d seen Dumbledore adopt when he set fire to the wardrobe, but before he could determine whether he liked this one or not, Ollivander had grabbed it from him and said, “Not quite. Unless I’m greatly mistaken, aspen’s martial nature suits you, but we can find a better fit. Try this: mahogany, dragon heartstring, eleven inches, pliable.”
Tom had barely lifted this one before the wandmaker tutted, snatched it away, and said, “No, no, much too flexible for you…”
If Ollivander took one more wand out of his hand before he was ready to give it up, Tom might not be able to keep himself from blasting the man out of his own store.
“Here. Yew, phoenix feather, thirteen-and-a-half inches, unyielding.”
Tom didn’t need Ollivander to tell him that this was the right one. The yew felt, somehow, inexplicably and perfectly his. Warmth spread up along his arm, and when he waved the wand, the whole of this rickety little shop shook, and a few boxes fell from the dusty shelves.
“Ah,” said Ollivander. “That’s an unusual wand you have there, Mr. Riddle. Yew is among the more uncommon magical woods, and phoenix feather is the rarest core type. I’ve never had occasion to sell this particular combination before. And it should be powerful—very powerful, I expect.”
Tom smiled and asked, “How much for it?”
“Seven Galleons.” Ollivander placed the wand back in its box, took Tom’s money, and turned to Adriana. “Now for you, miss.”
Tom expected Ollivander to find a wand for Adriana as swiftly as he’d discovered the yew for him, but it became evident quickly enough that this was not to be so. She tried wands made of walnut, spruce, poplar, pine, and sycamore, ranging from swishy to inflexible and seven inches to fourteen, with cores of every kind. She had barely touched a dogwood and phoenix feather wand when it emitted a loud bang and a jet of flames.
“Good grief, not this one.” Ollivander took the dogwood wand and returned it to its case. Then he walked around Adriana and said, “You’re a contradictory girl. So slight in build, yet you have the air of a dramatic magic user about you. And I would say dragon heartstring suits you best, for certain, except that those are most temperamental, and I suspect you might need a bit more stability in your wand.”
“What’s best for keeping control?” Adriana asked.
“Oh, undoubtedly unicorn hair, but they don’t have the kind of power you need, Miss Sharrow. Cherry and dragon heartstring would make a potent, although dangerous, pair, but if you have concerns about control, then it will never do.”
Thirty minutes later, and they’d still had no luck. Adriana tried so many different wands that even the calm, mysterious Ollivander seemed to grow frustrated. “Ten years I’ve run this shop,” he said. “Ten years, and in all this time I’ve never come across a customer so difficult.”
“Sorry,” she said, sounding not very sorry at all.
Tom sniggered, and Adriana shot him a hateful look that promised future retribution.
“Something must give,” Ollivander muttered. “Try this ebony. Good for dueling and Transfiguration. Dragon heartstring core, twelve inches, reasonably supple.”
Adriana pointed it at the paperweight on the counter, and it transformed into a rat, which scurried away. “I like this one,” she said. “It feels more right than the others.”
“Not a perfect match, I’m afraid,” said Ollivander. “You may have to exercise special caution as you get to know your wand, and as it gets to know you, but still, I think it will serve you well.”
“Finally,” said Tom. He stood and stretched, feeling awfully stiff after sitting in that spindly chair for over an hour. “Took you long enough.”
“Oh, shut up,” Adriana said, as she handed over her seven gold Galleons to Ollivander. “You just got lucky.”
Much later, back at the orphanage, Tom took his yew wand from its box and gave it an experimental wave. Luck, he thought, had very little to do with it. This wand was meant to be his, and he promised himself that with it, he would do incredible things.
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Great and Terrible Things