Tom was beginning to find his social calendar inconveniently full.
Dumbledore's invitation had arrived and gone unanswered. Then, barely a minute after Herbology let out, the Grey Lady decided to add herself to the list.
"Midnight. The Astronomy Tower. I'll be waiting."
She left the words hanging in the air, passed her spectral form straight through Tom's chest as though he were furniture, and drifted off without a backward glance.
Daphne's expression curdled into something complicated. She had heard every word. Midnight. A rooftop. One boy, one girl.
...Though, she supposed, a ghost couldn't exactly do much beyond haunt.
"Tom, you and the Grey Lady..." She hesitated, then asked anyway.
To head off whatever conclusions were forming in her mind, Tom leaned close and murmured near her ear. "I received Lady Ravenclaw's inheritance. In a sense, I'm her apprentice. The Grey Lady is actually..."
Daphne's eyes went perfectly round. She looked, for a moment, like a startled owl.
The news had genuinely stunned her.
Tom frowned slightly. "I thought I mentioned Helena's story to you at some point?"
"I have an enormous number of things to remember every day," Daphne said, with the air of someone stating an obvious and uncontestable fact. "Forgetting one or two is entirely reasonable."
Tom had no response to that. Irritatingly, it also made sense.
"Can I come tonight, then?" The small witch's eyes had taken on a particular gleam, bright with curiosity about the Grey Lady. Tom shook his head.
"If it were only about me, I'd say yes without hesitation. But this touches on Helena's privacy. Better not."
"Oh." Daphne pouted, but recovered quickly enough when Tom promised to take her to watch the Giant Squid at the Black Lake instead.
...
Herbology ended. Tom slotted his spade and bucket back into the rack by the classroom door and peeled away from the stream of students heading toward the main corridors. He took a shortcut, caught the moving staircase, and rode it up to the seventh floor.
"Hey there, Riddle kid." The gargoyle guarding the headmaster's office perked up at the sight of a familiar face, and didn't move aside. Instead, it settled in for a chat. "How was your holiday?"
Tom considered the question for a moment. "Eventful. I went and picked a fight with someone. Won, too."
"A fight?" The gargoyle's eyebrows shot up with obvious delight, then dropped into mild complaint. "Why didn't you bring me along? Sure, Dumbledore only gives me time off during summer, but this wouldn't be a holiday, would it? This would be protecting a Hogwarts student. He'd have approved."
"You're imagining things." Tom couldn't quite smother a laugh. "Dumbledore himself wasn't thrilled about what I did. He only found out after the fact. If he'd known in advance, I doubt he'd have let me leave the country at all."
The gargoyle let out a sound somewhere between a sigh and a grumble. "Dumbledore's always been too soft. Nothing like Godric." Then it paused, squinting. "Hold on. I didn't notice at first, Riddle kid, but you've got a... Ravenclaw smell on you."
Tom blinked. "You can smell things?"
"Obviously not." The gargoyle rolled its stone eyes. "That's what you humans call a figure of speech. A metaphor. You do know what a metaphor is?"
"Fair enough." Tom lifted a shoulder in a helpless shrug. "You're sharper than I gave you credit for. As for your 'Ravenclaw scent,' I can't explain it, though I always thought I belonged in Ravenclaw myself. Pity the Sorting Hat had other ideas."
He genuinely hadn't expected the gargoyle's instincts to be that precise. Even subtle changes hadn't escaped it. Then again, it made sense. The creature was one of the few things in the castle that had actually stood in the presence of the founders.
"Don't flatter yourself," the gargoyle said, with a short, dismissive laugh. "You might carry Ravenclaw's scent, but you're still a raven with Slytherin ambition running through its veins. Slytherin suits you. Now and always."
Tom raised a finger in a gesture that was not, strictly speaking, polite, then jerked his chin at the gargoyle to get out of the way.
The spiral staircase carried him upward. The headmaster's office door swung open on its own, revealing a desk spread with more food than Tom had expected. Enough for a proper meal, and not the standard fare conjured from the kitchens either. This had been prepared separately.
Dumbledore was already seated, watching Tom take his place across the table with a quiet, measured smile. He had been turning over the gargoyle's words from a moment ago, rolling them around in his mind.
In truth, from the moment the Grey Lady began to regard Tom with that particular attention, he had suspected some connection between Tom and that founder. Slytherin had left the Chamber of Secrets behind. It stood to reason that the others might have found their own ways to leave something of themselves as well.
The gargoyle's remark had only sharpened a suspicion that was already there. He kept it to himself. Merely filed it away and said nothing.
Tom glanced at the spread and gave an appreciative whistle. "You've gone all out, Professor."
All this, clearly prepared with care, not grabbed from the general kitchens. Which, naturally, made Tom more cautious rather than less. Lavish spreads before difficult conversations were a time-honored tradition.
"A headmaster does come with certain privileges." Dumbledore didn't rise to the teasing, and let slip a small confidence: the headmaster's office had its own dedicated house-elf. Even Professor McGonagall didn't enjoy that luxury.
For a little while, Tom allowed himself the experience of eating like a headmaster.