"Well..."
Tom paused, not answering immediately. Instead, he turned the question back on Harry. "You know that Dementors drain happiness from a person, and once the happiness is gone, all the grief and misery underneath rises to the surface, right?"
Harry nodded. He'd learned that much in the basic lessons after term started, and hadn't thought much of it at the time. Now, looking back, he almost felt embarrassed by how little he'd understood. No wonder Ron practically shriveled up at the mention of Dementors, and Hagrid, big as he was, had nearly cried when someone brought up Azkaban last year.
"But my reaction is completely different from everyone else's. Those images... they're..." Harry faltered, his voice sinking into something worn and defeated. "They're Voldemort killing my parents. By any logic, I was just a baby. I shouldn't be able to remember any of it. And yet there are even scenes from outside the room, so sharp and vivid it feels like I'm living through that night all over again."
"First of all," Tom said, "infants aren't entirely without memory. Those early experiences are simply buried deep in the mind, locked away until the right conditions pull them back to the surface. Many people mistake them for dreams, or hallucinations."
Tom had been researching memory extensively lately and could speak on it with something approaching authority, though he would never claim to rival a true specialist like Lavensohan in the field.
"And you've told me before that the scene from that night has appeared in your dreams. Dreams," he added, "are a form of memory too."
"That's the difference between you and everyone else. The suffering you carry is far heavier than what most people bear. Of course your reaction to Dementors is going to be stronger."
"And lastly..."
Tom's eyes moved to the scar on Harry's forehead. Harry reached up and touched it without thinking.
"You're saying Voldemort is influencing me?"
"More or less." Tom didn't deny it. "The Killing Curse that struck you carried an enormous weight of dark magic and negative force. You survived, but the impression it left behind didn't disappear."
Tom's private theory was that a fragment of Voldemort's soul was the true culprit. Under ordinary circumstances, Harry's own spirit and will were strong enough to keep it suppressed, and it caused no real harm. But Dementors weakened the mind and fed on negative emotion, and when that happened, the fragment grew restless.
Harry thought back carefully to the moments before he blacked out during the match. The sensation had been disturbingly familiar, closer than he'd ever admitted to how it felt when he faced Voldemort directly.
"So... if I learned the Patronus Charm, would that get rid of the influence?" Harry asked, hope sharpening his voice. He'd heard from others what happened after he lost consciousness, and understood now that the Patronus was the one thing Dementors couldn't stand against.
Tom nodded. "It's one way to handle it. If you can't eliminate the problem, eliminate what's causing the problem. That said, the Patronus Charm is a highly advanced spell. There are graduates who never manage it. And casting it in front of an actual Dementor is incomparably harder than any practice session. Go in with your eyes open."
"Can you teach me?"
"Me? I don't have the time." The refusal came without a moment's hesitation. "My advice: go to Lupin. He's an expert on Dark creatures, and Dementors are Dark creatures."
Tom was working himself ragged every single day, and even the time he carved out for his girlfriend had to be budgeted carefully. He had no intention of adding Harry to his schedule.
As for the question of whether Harry could pay him?
The money Tom made in a single minute already exceeded Harry's entire year of pocket money, with or without taking on a student.
...
Lupin.
Harry's thoughts drifted. Lupin had visited him yesterday while he was still in the Hospital Wing. Why hadn't Lupin mentioned that he knew the Patronus Charm? Was he under the impression that Harry couldn't manage it?
In the moment Harry spent lost in thought, Tom slipped quietly out of the Hospital Wing, sent a brief message to Hermione asking her to fetch the twins, and was gone.
...
Fifteen minutes later, Tom met George and Fred in the small courtyard garden. Both of them looked thoroughly deflated.
Gryffindor had lost the match yesterday. Cedric, to his credit, hadn't noticed Harry's collapse or the arrival of the Dementors before he spotted the Golden Snitch, and by the time he caught it, Harry had already fallen. Being the Hufflepuff he was in every sense of the word, Cedric had immediately requested a rematch, though that wasn't strictly within the rules. Wood had refused. Cedric, honour intact, had stood in the downpour for a long time before trudging miserably back to the castle.
"I've got a profitable venture in mind," Tom said. "And I need your help."
"Mr. Riddle, we are entirely at your disposal."
It was as if he'd pressed a switch. Both twins came immediately to life, crowding around him with bright, eager eyes.
Tom's mouth curved slightly. "Don't get ahead of yourselves. Whether you actually earn anything depends entirely on your own ability. I'll need to test you first."
The twins braced themselves and agreed, but once Tom began asking questions about alchemy, their tension eased considerably. Whatever their limitations elsewhere, Fred and George had always been serious about surpassing Zonko's one day, and their knowledge of alchemy and potions ran surprisingly deep.
Tom was satisfied.
Their level just barely met his requirements. There were a few core concepts they weren't familiar with, but that was expected. The twins were self-taught, with no formal alchemy coursework to speak of.
Tom himself had been in much the same position before his time under Nicolas Flamel's instruction, his knowledge broad but unstructured, pieced together from a dozen different directions with no real cohesion.
...
Once the assessment was finished, Tom produced a Spell-Deflecting Cloak and demonstrated its effects. Then he got to the point.
"The arrangement is simple. For every Spell-Deflecting Cloak you produce, I'll pay you ten Sickles."
"Ten Sickles?"
Fred's eyes lit up with a gleam so bright it might as well have been a Scintillation Charm. George's matched it exactly.
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