Andros's sudden interjection startled Tom so badly he nearly lost his place in the book. The next second, irritation bubbled up, and he snapped back in his head without mercy.
"Andros, do you even have a Galleon?"
"And she's eleven. What does she know about liking someone?"
Tom didn't say the obvious part out loud, because he didn't need to.
Falling in love with an eleven-year-old girl was ridiculous. Absolutely not happening.
But… raising her for a few years first was not off the table.
Andros scoffed, utterly unbothered.
"What's so strange about it? In my era, people got married and had children at thirteen or fourteen all the time. Earlier wasn't unheard of either."
Tom's eyes narrowed.
"Oh? Then what about you, Mister Andros?"
The question landed like a curse.
Instant silence. Instant emotional critical hit.
Back in the day, Andros had been a battle addict and a magic fanatic. Romance, family, love, all that sentimental nonsense, it only slowed down spellwork.
Women would affect his learning speed.
So he never bothered.
Not at thirteen. Not at twenty. Not at forty. Not even at the end of his life.
He had died exactly the way most geniuses didn't want to admit was possible.
Alone.
Single.
A legendary wizard who could summon a Patronus the size of a giant, and still somehow had zero descendants.
What a waste of talent. If he'd passed even a fraction of that gift down, he could've created a powerful family line all on his own.
Tom couldn't help thinking that maybe the wizarding world's obsession with bloodlines had some logic to it after all. Strong wizards left behind more than money.
They left behind power.
And knowledge.
Both became "foundation," and foundation was the difference between a family that lasted three generations and a family that lasted three hundred years.
The Gaunt family was proof.
So were the Sacred Twenty-Eight.
A lot of those names had been glorious once.
…
With Andros neatly knocked out, Tom felt a little smug. He could practically hear the ancient Greek hero sulking.
And then Andros did the most Andros thing possible.
He shut himself off.
The connection went quiet, like someone had slammed a door.
Tom almost laughed. He held it back, because Daphne was still talking, still asking question after question in her soft, curious voice.
Tom answered smoothly, his tone patient, polite, even gentle.
At the same time, he started doing what he always did when presented with someone new.
He collected information.
Daphne, unfortunately for herself, was an honest and relatively sheltered girl. She wasn't built to resist someone with a thousand-layered social toolkit. A few casual questions later, she had already spilled an impressive amount of Greengrass family trivia.
For example, her mother was the head of the Ministry's Transportation Department.
Her maternal grandmother had also been the head.
And her great-grandmother had been the head as well.
Apparently, the Greengrass women had been running wizarding transport like it was a family business passed down with the heirloom silver.
And then Daphne added, with the frustrated tone of a child complaining about unfair rules, that the Greengrass family had a tradition of husbands marrying into the family.
Not wives marrying out.
In other words, the men married in.
And, just as casually, she dropped the most absurd detail of all.
"For three hundred years," she said, "our family has only had daughters."
Tom stared at her for half a heartbeat, then forced his face to remain normal.
Only daughters.
Three hundred years.
That wasn't a coincidence.
That was either a curse, a blessing, or a genetic punchline so strong it made reality feel suspicious.
Then came the line that made Tom's heart skip.
Daphne sighed and said, "And my allowance is only two hundred Galleons per term."
Tom almost choked on air.
Only.
Two hundred.
Per term.
Hogwarts had three terms in a school year.
That meant Daphne got six hundred Galleons a year in pocket money.
Six hundred.
Tom's mind did a quick calculation, then did it again to make sure he wasn't hallucinating.
Six hundred Galleons a year was almost what Dumbledore had given him for seven years, depending on how carefully he spent it.
Tom's eyes sharpened slightly.
A rich girl. A soft, cute, rich girl.
And she was right here, sharing a compartment with him, smiling, asking questions, looking at him like he was interesting.
He suddenly understood something important about the universe.
Sometimes, fate didn't just give you problems.
Sometimes, fate handed you solutions with blonde curls.
Marrying into the family was not a problem at all.
Tom's attitude toward Daphne became visibly kinder without him even noticing. He spoke a bit warmer. He answered more thoughtfully. He even let a few amused expressions slip through.
Daphne's smile never left her face after that.
Around twelve-thirty, the compartment door slid open again.
A plump, cheerful woman stood outside with a trolley, her expression bright and practiced.
"Anything to eat, dears?"
"Absolutely!" Daphne hopped up like she'd been waiting for this moment all her life. She rushed to the trolley like an excited kid in a sweets shop, eyes shining.
Saying she "picked" food was generous.
She basically swept the trolley.
A little of everything, in different quantities, like she was assembling a strategic reserve for the apocalypse.
And she bought nearly every Chocolate Frog in sight.
When she paid, Tom finally saw the total.
Two Galleons and thirteen Sickles.
That was… a terrifying amount of snack money.
Tom's mind immediately compared it to the Weasley family's situation, and the conclusion was brutal.
She had just spent the equivalent of an entire school year's pocket money for a poor family, and she did it with the casual confidence of someone buying gum.
Tom now understood why Daphne complained about two hundred Galleons per term being "not enough."
At her spending pace, she could blow through that in a month.
Maybe less.
While Daphne was paying, Tom quietly observed the snack witch.
He'd heard rumors that this witch had been hired by the Ministry back in 1830, when the Hogwarts Express first began running.
If that was true, she was at least one hundred and eighty years old.
Even among wizards, that counted as long-lived.
Tom didn't just look himself.
He reopened the connection and dragged the sulking Andros back out.
Andros, still offended, didn't speak. He just watched.
They studied the witch from different angles, looking for signs of concealment, enchantments, glamour, anything.
Nothing.
No strange aura. No obvious disguise. No hidden wrinkles smoothed by magic.
She simply looked like a pleasant, ordinary witch selling food.
When she finally pushed the trolley away, Tom gave up.
Maybe she really was just naturally long-lived.
Maybe it was a bloodline thing.
Maybe she'd gotten lucky.
Either way, it wasn't worth obsessing over.
Daphne returned with a mountain of sweets and snacks and placed everything on the table between them with generous confidence.
"Let's share," she said.
Tom accepted without hesitation.
If you were going to dream of living off a rich girl, you couldn't be shy about accepting snacks.
They ate and talked, and the topic drifted naturally toward the Sorting.
"My whole family is in Slytherin," Daphne said with a shy little smile, like she was admitting something expected but still personal. "So if nothing goes wrong, I'll probably go to Slytherin too. But… other houses should be fine. Mum wouldn't be angry. Just… please don't let me go to Gryffindor."
Tom tilted his head, genuinely curious.
"Why do you hate Gryffindor that much?"
Daphne didn't even hesitate.
"Mum says Gryffindor is the source of all trouble."
She spoke with sincere disdain, as if the house itself was a bad habit the school couldn't quit.
"Wherever Gryffindors are, things are never quiet. You never know what kind of mess they'll cause next."
Tom thought about it for one second.
Then he had to admit something.
Mrs. Greengrass's assessment was disturbingly accurate.
Daphne noticed Tom had gone quiet and immediately panicked, like she'd said something rude.
"Um… Riddle," she said quickly. "Do you want to go to Gryffindor?"
"No," Tom said, smiling lightly. "I'd prefer Ravenclaw. Or Hufflepuff. Somewhere quiet, where I can actually study."
"You like studying so much," Daphne said with complete confidence, "you'll definitely get into Ravenclaw."
Right then, a scream rang out in the corridor outside.
Tom and Daphne exchanged a brief glance.
Neither reacted much. On the Hogwarts Express, a scream could mean anything from "someone dropped a trunk on their toe" to "someone just met a rat."
They finished eating and were about to rest for a bit, maybe even nap, when knocking sounded at the door.
Before either of them could answer, the compartment door opened.
A girl stepped in.
She had thick, bushy brown hair and a face that was cute in a blunt, energetic way, except for the prominent front teeth that made her look slightly awkward in the wrong lighting.
Behind her, a chubby boy hovered in the doorway, nervous and trembling like he expected to be punished for existing.
The girl started speaking immediately, voice bright and urgent.
"Have you seen a toad… Riddle? Why are you here?!"
She froze mid-sentence, staring at Tom like she'd just walked into a ghost story.
Then she screamed.
A real scream, sharp enough to make the boy behind her flinch so hard he nearly folded in half.
Daphne's brows drew together instantly, displeasure forming on her face. The girl had barged in without waiting, and then yelled at Tom like he'd committed a crime.
Worse, she clearly knew him.
Daphne didn't like that.
Not one bit.
Tom, in contrast, remained calm. He looked up at the intruder with the composed patience of someone who had survived group projects.
"Miss Granger," he said evenly. "If you can be on the Hogwarts Express, why wouldn't I be?"
"N-no, I didn't mean you can't," Hermione Granger stammered, cheeks flushing as she realized how she sounded. "I-I just meant… this is great!"
And just like that, Daphne's expression darkened.
Her mood shifted so quickly it was almost physical.
She suddenly looked like a child watching someone reach for her favorite toy.
As if the moment Hermione appeared, something she cared about was about to be taken.
Tom didn't miss the look.
He also didn't miss the way Hermione's eyes kept darting to him, wide and bright and disbelieving, like she couldn't reconcile the boy she'd competed with in Muggle school competitions with the fact that he was now here, in this world, on this train.
The compartment fell into a strange, tense silence.
And Tom, for the first time since boarding, felt the shape of trouble approaching.
Because Hermione Granger didn't show up quietly.
She never had.
And if she was here now, standing in his doorway, staring at him like destiny had just slapped her in the face…
Then something was about to start.
What exactly had Hermione recognized in him that made her react like that?