Chapter Text
As the hour grew later, Tom began the closing up duties for the day. He worked his way around the room in a counterclockwise circle, locking up cases, double checking safeguard charms, and tidying anything that had been left out of place. The place was immaculate—it never took much more than a twitch of his fingers to issue the cleaning charms, so banal they were.
Finishing his round of the room, he closed the front door, lowered the blinds and locked them all into place. Turning off the external lights, Borgin and Burkes was officially closed for the day.
He then returned to the front desk in order to lock away the smaller items and close the cash drawer. He’d count it, make a bundle with the extra and place it in the safe for Burke to deal with in the morning. There had been a lot of window shoppers today, inordinately resistant to selling or buying, but he’d still made good money selling a few smaller collections to gullible and curious customers.
Collecting up the drawer, he took it into the back to count and deal with. That took only a few minutes, his fingers moving quickly over the glinting piles of coins and stacking them up into rolls for deposit. He slid the day’s earnings into the safe, tallying up the current money present—almost five thousand galleons. If Burke didn’t take it to deposit soon, the temptation to skim a bit off the deposits might get too much.
Locking the safe, Tom straightened up. At the same moment, he heard the rushing sound of the floo activating and the thump and rattle of something hitting the ground and, perhaps a display case. Tom closed his eyes for a moment to gather his patience around him—scarce as it was at this time of day—and stepped out from the back.
“I’m sorry,” he called out, “But we’re closed…” His voice faded off as he noticed no one standing in the front room.
Odd.
Tom walked out around the desk and went to investigate. Perhaps someone had chucked something through the floo? It wasn’t entirely unheard of. There were a surprising amount of wizards that were recluses.
But when he came around to see the spot in front of the floo, Tom saw not a wrapped package or even the shimmer of disillusionment but a child.
An unconscious, barely pubescent child by the look of it, but a child, none-the-less. Streaked with ash from floo travel, lying in a crumpled heap, was an olive skinned boy with wild dark curls obscuring his face. Tom approached cautiously, wand drawn.
To his knowledge, Burke did not deal in trafficking children. To his knowledge, no one who would would do so in such a manner. After all, the boy was not bound, there was no obvious note, nor signs of injury and struggle if he had tried to escape.
No, as mundane as it was for an answer, Tom believed that this must simply be a floo accident. How droll.
And how inconvenient. He couldn’t just leave the boy here at the business. He’d have to dispose of him some way, either by finding his family and returning him, or depositing him out in the street for the hags to do with what they will.
It never hurt to have another family indebted to him—after all, this could be some little heir and his parents could be desperate for his return. So Tom decided to roll the boy over with a flick of his wand to look at his face.
Hm. His silhouette was familiar—in the way that many pureblood lines tended to be if you looked at them enough—and he figured that it might be worth the effort of returning him after all. He decided to check the boy’s pockets for any information or his wallet or something.
He found a wand tucked into the boy’s pocket, denoting him as Hogwarts age at the very least, as well as a pouch of galleons that he immediately pocketed. He rummaged a little more and found a folded up piece of parchment. Unfolding it, he was greeted with the familiar list of supplies required for Hogwarts. Tom lingered over the list, curious to see what was different between his own time there and this boys.
Most of it was sensible, or similar enough, though he had no idea bout these Lockhart books. Curious.
And then Tom saw something that would change his perception of the boy entirely. Sitting at the top of the sheet in the corner, innocuous and ubiquitous to these sorts of letters, was the date.
To be precise, it was the date of August 2nd, 1992.
Nineteen-ninety-two.
Tom looked down at the boy and whispered to himself, “Just who are you?”
There wasn’t a lot of space in his little apartment, but the boy wasn’t very big either. Tom cleaned him off and transfigured a couch out of a piece of wood that he kept around for this sort of thing in particular. He had the boy strongly disillusioned, not just visibly but by scent and sound in case he woke up, and had floated him back without any trouble.
For now, Tom let him sleep while he fixed himself some soup to eat. The process was quick and soon there was a pot on the stove bubbling away. It would need some time to stew, however, so he went to his tiny bathroom to clean off the stink of customers and cursed objects all day. By the time he was clean, dried, dressed, and ate some soup, he was ready to deal with the boy from the future.
If it had been the parchment alone that clued him in, Tom wouldn’t have wholly believed it. After all, anyone could write the incorrect date down for something. However, in moving the boy around, he’d pulled open his robes and discovered bizarre clothing beneath. A threadbare shirt with a strangely plastic sort of textured image to the front and denim trousers that he’d seen popular with muggles after the war. They were also too big and tattered at the hems as if worn out from being dragged on the ground.
The boy’s shoes were no better than the rest of his clothes, laces tied loosely, the sole coming off in some places.
If Tom had to guess, some scion of a noble house this boy might be, but neglected he definitely was. It was strange to see, considering the rather large lump sum of money he carried with him.
He knew from personal experience that if he had even half as many galleons at that age, he would have done what he could to repair his clothes first. Presentation was key when one was working their way up in the world. Once Tom had gotten to Hogwarts, some of the first spells he’d learned were those to repair holes in clothes or to make them more durable or temperature controlled. Presumably, this small boy had yet to get to Hogwarts, though he had his wand purchased, and had not yet learned the same.
If that wasn’t the case, then…
Tom would despair for the education of the children of the future, just as he despaired for the education of the children in the present. Magic was at their fingertips and they did not think to use it for all their problems? It was ridiculous.
Finally, Tom decided that he’d wake the boy. He took his wand from him, double checked that he had nothing else of value, and then reinforced the privacy and silencing wards on his apartment. With that done, he cast ennervate at the boy.
The boy gasped. His eyelids fluttered. Tom saw, briefly, the flash of bright green from them. Then the boy turned his head and slipped back into unconsciousness.
Strange.
Tom cast a diagnostic charm next, which explained everything.
The travel through time had depleted the boy’s already rather strained magical core. Tom was no medical expert, but he imagined the boy would not wake for several days, or even up to a week if he couldn’t acquire any supplemental potions for him.
Fingering the wallet he had lifted, Tom considered his options. The ingredients for such a potion were not that expensive and the brewing would only take a few hours. Tom required a lot less sleep than he used to, now that he had his Horcruxes, he could easily set up and brew what was necessary. It would help the boy recover and endear him to Tom at the same time.
Then, once the boy was conscious and his mind unguarded, Tom could pull all the information from the future he could possibly desire.
Decision made, Tom floated the boy into the bedroom. He settled him on the bed, removing the outer robe and adjusting his clothes for him. He debated leaving him in the trousers—they looked bloody uncomfortable to sleep in—and ultimately removed them. He transfigured the boy’s shirt so it fit him better on the shoulders and was made of pure cotton instead of whatever the hell it was before. He made sure it was long enough to give him modesty, then covered the boy in a blanket to his chin.
With a ward alarm on the bed in case—through some miracle—the boy woke and got up, Tom left him there. The soup he left with a mild stasis charm to keep from boiling over while unattended. He untransfigured the couch, plucked up the money pouch, and headed out to do his shopping.
This would be enough to pick up that historical tome he’d been eyeing in Tandy’s shop down the road, the one that he was certain would give him more information on the diadem.
What a fortuitous night this had become.