The man in the sturdy wooden chair and the boy sitting on the bed looked at each other, and from the perspective of the young boy, it should be considered a visit from a doctor to a patient. So it is not all that surprising that the following conversation takes place.
"Professor? Is it like a 'doctor'? What are you doing here? Did Mrs. Cole ask you to come and give me a check-up? I haven't done anything to Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop at all, you can ask them yourself, and they'll tell you!"
Felix looked at Tom Riddle's wary young face and was no stranger to these words. After all, he had heard these words many times before.
"As I said - I'm Professor Dumbledore and I work at a school called Hogwarts. I've come to invite you to study at that school today-"
Riddle jumped off the bed with a jolt of anger, and Felix lowered his glasses slightly. "Hogwarts is a school of magic, and I'm a wizard." And said.
The words that Riddle wanted to say were clogged in his throat. He had thought that the so-called 'Hogwarts' was nothing more than an Asylum for an Insane and that the man in front of him had been brought in by Mrs. Cole when she finally couldn't take it anymore and wanted to get rid of him, but the other man said something very different.
There was a long silence. Riddle stared at Felix expressionlessly, scanning up and down his body as if trying to pick up the slightest flaw. Felix looked back at him with interest, without a hint of discomfort.
"Magic?" Riddle finally repeated softly, "Those skills of mine, are ... magic?"
"What kind of skills you have?"
"All sorts. I can make things move without touching them with my hands. I can make animals do my bidding without training. I can make whoever pisses me off miserable. I can hurt them if I want to." Riddle said in a lowered voice, looking exuberant, his face clouded with an unnatural flush. He lowered his head and stared at his hands, which were trembling badly, "I've known for a long time that I am different. I've known for a long time that I am special. I've known for a long time I have something that others don't have."
From the adult's point of view, Riddle's sunken cheeks could be seen twisting into a frenzied arc. Felix decided to do something about it, to stop following the original trajectory and make a change from the start.
He reached into his trouser pocket. Riddle's eyes suddenly shot upwards as fast as they could, staring at the movement of that hand. His head remained bowed, resulting in a few deep wrinkles piling up on his forehead, and you could only see the large whites of his eyes from below the bulging eyebrows.
Felix pulled out a sheet of parchment.
"What's wrong?" He asked gently.
"It's nothing." Riddle promptly said, so Felix withdrew his gaze and unfolded the parchment by himself, and looked at its contents. Riddle hesitated for a moment and said, "I thought you might be carrying a weapon."
"A weapon?"
"I mean, the things for casting magic."
"You mean a wand?"
"So there really is one?" Riddle's eyes immediately glanced over his body where there would be pockets as if to find a place that could hide something. "The orphanage invited someone from the church over once, and I asked that person about it, but she knew nothing about what witches and wizards could do, she just said they were evil."
"Wizards are a secret to ordinary people." Felix explained, shaking his hand in front of Riddle's face and a black wand appeared out of thin air, Riddle's face immediately shone with greed as he pointed at it.
"Where can I get one of these?"
"You'll get it when the time comes, besides, it's not a weapon, it's a tool to assist us in casting spells, you'll learn how to control your magic and cast spells at the school." Felix said gently, "Let's get back to the point, as a magic school professor, it is my duty to guide young wizards of muggle origin-"
"What's a muggle?" Riddle interrupted him impolitely.
"-is a wizard whose parents are not wizards, or who have been raised in a non-magical environment where they cannot determine their origins."
Riddle muttered something.
"I will move on with that; it is my responsibility to educate young wizards from Muggle families about the wizarding world in general, as well as to assess their psychology and confirm their eligibility to pursue their studies at Hogwarts."
Riddle's face suddenly went stiff. The sky outside the window clouded over and thunder roared in the distance.
"Psychological assessment?"
"It's just a standard process," Felix explained, glancing out of the window and speaking faster, "Just because Hogwarts is a wizarding school doesn't mean there aren't requirements for moral character. Never mind, you can just read it and see for yourself." He handed Riddle the makeshift rules.
Riddle's eyes withdrew from the wand, and he lowered his head to read the contents of the parchment.
"Care for fellow students, no bullying ... no stealing and hogging property ..." he seemed to have suddenly thought of something and stiffly said, "I don't have any money."
"The school has grants." Felix looked at Riddle, "Do you have any questions about the contents listed on it?"
"What will happen if you breach it?"
"It depends on the case, generally a detention, if it's serious it could result in expulsion or a stay in Azkaban, aka wizard prison."
Riddle fell silent with an expressionless face as if weighing the pros and cons.
"You claimed that wands are not weapons?" He asked abruptly, changing the subject.
"Yes."
"Prove it to me." He said pompously.
Felix raised an eyebrow.
"I mean ... please," Riddle said as he looked for a remedy, his whole being becoming courteous, "may I call you Professor Dumbledore, sir? Because you said ... you would educate me about common sense in magic, and I grew up in a magicless place where I never got to see my kind ..."
Oddly enough, as he spoke, the thunder outside gradually diminished.
Felix stood up and casually waved his wand, and the wooden chair he had just been sitting on immediately turned into a mighty lion, which run round the floor and turned into a badger, which darted all over the room and climbed up to the most elevated old cupboard in the room, and Riddle became nervous, but the little badger opened its arms and turned into a bronze eagle with widely spread wings. It stood on the cupboard and swooped down towards the two men, and at the last second, it transformed into a living snake.
Riddle showed his fondness for it almost immediately.
He said in a Parseltongue, "Stand up." The snake obediently raised its head. Riddle quietly raised his eyes to size up Felix and whispered, "I can talk to snakes, Professor Dumbledore. Is that normal for a wizard? Can you talk to snakes?"
"It's rare, I've only seen it mentioned in books."
Riddle gazed down at the little snake and after a moment, he spoke again in a Parseltongue, and the little snake hissed as it lazily rolled up to twist and turn its belly in front of them. Felix's expression remained unchanged, with a faint smile on his face.
What he said in the Parseltongue was 'Can you die like a real snake?
"Where should I go to buy books, Professor Dumbledore?"
Felix pulled another envelope from his pocket and handed it to Riddle, "It contains a shopping list and train ticket, you can look at them first, I'll come back next week and take you to buy the necessary items for school-"
"I don't need you," said Riddle, "I'm used to doing things on my own, I have spent most of my time running around London by myself. So where should I go - Professor Dumbledore?"
"I'm afraid not," Felix shook his head, "I don't have any money with me today, and - it's dangerous enough to let a young wizard wander into unfamiliar places. I have a dozen more homes to visit this week, and I'll take you to Diagon Alley when it's over, where you'll find everything you need."
"Maybe you'll make a friend or two a little ahead of time as well."
The two men stared at each other, the first time Felix had entered the room and explicitly rejected Riddle. Boom! A bolt of lightning exploded in front of the window, but neither of the two averted their gaze. "Okay, Professor Dumbledore, I'll see you next week." Riddle said.
Felix nodded at him, ignoring the glint of red that appeared in his eyes. Waving his hand, he let the wriggling snake on the floor turn back into a wooden chair.
The moment he closed the door, the scene outside became a blur, the long corridor opened up its bloody maw, ready to devour people. Felix strides down the stairs and a thin, scrawny woman - she is Mrs. Cole, the orphanage's matron - darted up to meet him.
"Mr. Dumbledore - excuse me, you are Dumbledore, right? I see, have you finished your business?"
"Yes, Mrs. Cole. I will be visiting again next week."
"No problem," Mrs. Cole said, and the two went downstairs together, "it's a good thing - oh, slow down, you're going too fast." She called out, and by the time she reached the corner in the centre of the ground floor, Felix was already at the door.
He opened the door and turned to look at the large cloud of black smoke rising from the dilapidated, black and white tiled foyer, but strangely enough, everyone around him had turned a blind eye to it, their eyes glowing with an oozing red light just like Riddle's had.
"Why don't we have a shot of a bottle of gin ... Hap?" Mrs. Cole's voice became low and husky as a crowd of people with glowing red eyes approached with rigid expressions.
"Goodbye." Felix simply said briefly and slammed the door with a bang.
The street was surrounded by black clouds and the wind was howling as Felix jumped quickly down the steps outside the door and passed the barren courtyard with lightning-fast footsteps. The heavy iron gate slammed shut behind him.
As soon as he stepped out, Felix waved his arms dramatically.
The wind blew harder, black clouds seemed to fall low enough to brush the nearby buildings, and from the tumbling clouds a hideous face twisted and appeared, a crack appeared in the ground beneath Felix's feet, extending rapidly into the distance.
The entire Wool's Orphanage sank violently downwards.
Felix's expression became serious, knowing that the backlash brought on by the alteration in memory had arrived and Voldemort's will had started to automatically erase this memory that should not exist. He pulled a silvery-blue blob, neither gas nor liquid, out of his pocket, then his figure flashed in quick succession as the blank shards of memory merged into the fissure, patching it up.
When Felix stopped, the phenomenon disappeared, and although the earth was left with an ugly scar and the sky looked like it had been duct-taped together, the memory was temporarily saved from being completely shredded by Voldemort.
Felix stood on the pavement and sighed in relief. After more than two months of trial and error, and with the information provided by Dumbledore, he had finally taken the first step and managed to plant a seed in Voldemort's mind.
What he had to do is much more than simply modifying the memories.
Fragmented memory alterations would not work, an Archmage like Voldemort would have perfect definitions of his own memories, altering, masking, blocking, or gluing in a few fake memories would only make him realize immediately that something was wrong, causing minimal impact.
Felix didn't think that false memories would make Voldemort cry and sincerely repent.
Besides, Voldemort's soul was already very fragile from the split, and if Felix made a drastic adjustment, the results could be devastating.
So Felix decided to open up another battleground - a separate branch that split off from Voldemort's memories, which is now this Wool's Orphanage in front of him. Felix would replace Dumbledore in Riddle's memory, as he really had gone back to 1930s London, England, and nurture him by being his Transfiguration teacher for seven years.
Of course, Felix doesn't really need to spend seven years.
The time in memory would move quite rapidly, he just needed to appear at the crucial point in time for Voldemort, to give the right guidance and keep the beneficial results from it fixed with 'memory nodes' to make this Riddle strong.
Felix didn't have any expectation of making Voldemort into a good person; from the first few times, he had observed the scene when Riddle and Dumbledore first met, he could see that Riddle had developed an early independent, cautious, aloof, and extremely aggressive personality.
Felix simply wanted Riddle to be a normal person with a different life path than the Dark Lord. The more 'experiences' he had, the more his personality would be very different from his own, but the two would eventually merge. Because memory is just a memory, not a soul, and cannot exist as individual life.
As Felix paced around the orphanage, he went over to one of the walls and stared at a window on the third floor.
From this angle, only the top of Tom Riddle's head could be seen.
At this moment, Riddle is sitting expressionlessly on his bed, with a book list, train ticket, and questionnaires that are not supposed to exist, placed in front of him, and slowly he furrows his brow. For some reason, just as they parted, he had a sudden desire to attack the young Professor Dumbledore, a desire that came out of nowhere.
But that would be the absolute stupidest thing to do; he still had to rely on this man to enter the wizarding world.
At the thought of magic, Riddle's nostrils flared with excitement and ragged breaths erupted from his nostrils. Then he lowered his head and stared at the questionnaire. He had matured earlier than most of his peers and was wise enough to analyse the hidden details from just a few words.
Hogwarts has its own rules, the same as those pesky ones out here. This meant that the wizarding world is equally well-ordered. Riddle wasn't sure how much the professor knew about him, but Dumbledore had mentioned 'making friends', did that imply something?
Riddle felt a little uneasy as he stared at the old cupboard.
Stealing is forbidden at Hogwarts.
Dumbledore would be back next week.
He had to do something. Riddle got out of bed, walked over to the worn cupboard, and jerked the door open. Inside there were several old clothes and a small cardboard box on the highest shelf.
Riddle took a deep breath, remembering clearly where each item in the box came from; Dennis Bishop's swimming pull reel, Amy Benson's harmonica and a silver thimble ... and all other trophies that he had snatched from the other kids.
But there is no need to rush, Riddle thought, it would be best to wait until the day before that Dumbledore's next visit to hand them over.
He slammed the cupboard door shut and stared at the grey mirror on the door, then a smile began to spread across his face as Riddle showed far more patience than a child his age should have, constantly adjusting the curve of his mouth, the position of his arms, and his posture.
He is exceptionally gifted, and soon he is doing a decent job.
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