Chapter 7: Nathe

The headmaster was speaking again but, once again, Tom wasn't really listening to him. It was far more fascinating to gaze around at the other members of his house; a few of them stared back forcing him to look away but mostly they glared morosely at the empty serving plates as if something might appear there if they stared hard enough. Then, suddenly, something did. Tom blinked and looked down at the nearest platter which was brimming with food; gravy rivers running through mashed potato mountains.

Another thing that had been explained while he'd been daydreaming then. That would have to stop; he wanted to actually learn things here. For the moment though he concentrated on the task in front of him, the smell of fried food too strong, for a person who had not eaten for the last nine hours, to resist.

"So you're the heir," a cold voice, stated, so incredulously it sounded like a question rather than a statement.

Tom swallowed quickly at turned to his left where Nathaniel Rico sat, distorted by some translucent substance hanging in between them. He forced himself to focus and realised he was sitting next to a ghost.

"Er… yer." He extended a hand in greeting and tried to smile. The ghost did not smile back, and Tom redrew his hand rapidly. Ghosts did not shake hands. "I'm Tom."

"I know." The ghost sighed. Obviously Tom had not been who he was expecting. "I suppose you have no idea who I am."

Not wanting to seem impolite Tom quickly assessed the ghost. He had been tall and imposing in life. Some of this still lingered in death but now the sense of menace clinging around him came from the silver bloodstains upon his robes, shining eerily in the light from the candles hanging above him. "Um… you're Slytherin," Tom guessed, trying to make it sound as little like a guess as possible "and" his eyes lit on an insignia "You're a baron!" he finished triumphantly.

The baron looked moderately impressed. "Yes, well done boy. In life I was the Baron of Shropshire and you…" his translucent eyes met Tom's and the boy suppressed a shiver. "You are Slytherin's heir… He's talked to you already I presume." Tom nodded. "Yes…. I suspect he's delighted that one of his descents was finally put into his house; your mother was a Hufflepuff I believe." The word Hufflepuff seemed to have a nasty tang and he spat it out with a sneer. "And a large number of her ancestors were Gryffindor. Obviously I have very little to do with the other houses so I have never been able to talk to any of his line before. It is an… interesting experience."

"Well, I've never talked to a ghost before," Tom assured him.

"That is painfully obvious."

Tom felt himself blushing but at a loss for anything intelligent to say. The baron rose to his ghostly feet, which were encased in buckled boots. "I'm sure we will talk again," he said, and Tom, unsure as to whether this was a goodbye or an offer for a weekly lunch, nodded seriously and hoped it was the former. "Yes…" The baron narrowed his eyes and floated elegantly down the rows of students.

Tom let out his breath and turned back to his mashed potato as the whispers built up around him.

Finally somebody snapped "you there." Tom looked up into the face of a blonde boy, several years older than him. "…Riddly or whatever your name was."

"Riddle," Tom corrected, doubting the boy would remember his name in half an hour's time.

"Yes, whatever…you were speaking to the Bloody Baron," the boy persisted.

"…Yes?"

The whispers towered further; the boy's face held the same grudging respect as the baron's had earlier. "I've been here for two years and I've never heard him speak to anyone." Those around him agreed, including several people who looked considerably older than the blonde boy.

"Oh," Tom replied, stupidly. He thought about telling them that the baron hadn't really said anything but while he was thinking this the others had already lost interest in him. Clearly, a boy who could only manage sentences of one word maximum, no matter if he seemed to have attracted curiosity of the Bloody Baron, was not anybody very remarkable.

Tom smiled slightly and turned back to where the ghost had been earlier.

Nathaniel Rico was staring across the hall, but not at anything in particular, eating with a supreme lack of concentration and apparently ignoring all those around him; not that anybody was making any particular effort to speak to him but Nathaniel seemed to think that it was better to make sure that if anybody intended to they would be very quickly dissuaded or perhaps, Tom thought, he was just unaware that there were other people around him. He was frowning slightly; thinking and was, therefore, very surprised when the boy next to him tapped him on the shoulder, grinned disarmingly and announced his name was Tom.

"And you're Nathaniel."

Nathanial turned, assessed him quickly with an air of astonishment, as if he hadn't really expected anyone to be sitting next to him or for those people to talk to him. "Yes, I am," he replied eventually, his voice slightly aristocratic. He smiled briefly at Tom, a smile that looked much more at home on his face than the frown that had sat there previously, but one that was quickly gone, and turned back to his contemplation of the wall, perhaps hoping Tom would go away or at least bother the person on his other side.

Tom suppressed an inward sigh. This must have been how the Bloody Baron had felt talking to him. "Do your friends call you Nathe?" The other did not reply. "Or, um… 'Thaniel?" Nathaniel turned to look at him, bewilderment and incredulity vying for room on his face. Tom backtracked hastily. "No, probably not… that sounds a bit like spaniel, doesn't it?"

The other boy looked confused for a moment longer then laughed rather helplessly. "Nathe will do, I suppose, but no one's ever called me that before."

Tom surveyed him; Nathaniel was slightly taller than him but not much, his skin the colour of very milky coffee and his hair, long and tied back in a plait that brushed past his shoulders. Now that he wasn't scowling any more he looked slightly nervous, as he had before he had tried on the hat; he did not, however, look at all biblical. "So," Tom began, "people just call you… Nathaniel?"

The newly christened Nathe, nodded, smiling slightly. "Yes, well, no; my father generally refers to me as "boy." Boy, like an insult… as if, perhaps, I'm young and foolish on purpose." He frowned, suddenly looking sterner and older. "Boy, come here," Nathe snapped in a voice that was not his own. "Explain yourself, this instant. Your mother tells me you've-"

"You're an actor," Tom breathed, interrupting.

"What?" Nathe snapped again, this time with his own intonation. "No, I'm not-"

"You did your father's voice," Tom insisted. "That was incredible." He cast around the room for a suitable subject. "Do Professor Dippet. I wasn't listening to his speech at the beginning, I bet you…"

"Tom," Nathe insisted, firmly; the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth once more. "You've never met my father. For all you know he could be a kind, enthusiastic old fool and I've portrayed him completely incorrectly."

"Which makes you a better actor… I mean I believed you." He paused. "Please."

Nathe frowned again, the lines forming easily on his face yet looking oddly incongruous. Clearly, while he frowned a lot, his face was not made for it. Then he slumped slightly, the muscles in his face relaxing. "When the feast is over," he quavered, "you will follow your house prefects to your dormitories." He smiled kindly. "Where, I'm sure, you will all be eager to get acquainted with your new beds as well as your house mates."

Tom beamed. "Fantastic! …Told you you were an actor," he added proudly.

Nathe grinned; matching Tom's own. "Well… I'm not really. I mean my parents would probably disown me; they want me to go into the Ministry."

"Of…defence?" the other asked uncertainly.

Nathe looked unsure whether this was supposed to be a joke or not and laughed just in case it was. "Of magic… Father's really high up, head of his department. I wouldn't be surprised if he wanted me to follow in his footsteps although at the moment he barely acknowledges my existence so I'm not sure how that's going to work." He grimaced slightly then brightened. "At least I've managed to get into Slytherin… I can't imagine what my parents would have said if I'd been put in Gryffindor."

"Yer, Godric said you'd be good there," Tom said without thinking.

"Godric? …Gryffindor?"

He contemplated lying but nothing feasible came to mind. "I…er… heard what the hat was saying to you." They other boy's face darkened again as if Nathe couldn't ever decide exactly how he should be feeling at any given time and swung between anger and good humour before anybody could adjust to the current emotion. "I heard what it said to everyone," Tom admitted, apologetically. "You wanted to be put into Slytherin so Godric, he's the voice you spoke to, allowed you to be placed there though I suspect he was unhappy letting you go. The Founders seem to have this obsession with choice…" he tailed off but Nathe no longer appeared to be angry.

"Well at least I chose correctly," he said, turning back to his food which melted from his plate the next moment. "Ugh," he whined, sounding more like the eleven-year-old boy he was. "I hadn't finished that."

Tom was too busy searching for his own food to reply as the puddings appeared. "Is… erm, everything done by magic here?" he asked hesitantly.

"Of course," Nathe answered, sounding rather like Tom had just asked for confirmation that the world was round. "Why? Don't you have house elves where you live?"

"No," Tom replied, thinking it better to conceal that he had no idea what a house elf was.

"Gosh, that must be awful. Mother keeps going on about how lucky we are to have a house elf but I never really thought there were people who didn't have any; did you parents do the cooking then?" As he spoke Nathe pilled a rather large amount of jelly onto the bowl in front of him, apparently trying to make up for the disappearance of his first course.

"I lived in an orphanage," Tom clarified, reaching across the table for one of the cakes out of his reach. The pointy faced blonde boy who had asked him about the Bloody Baron earlier watched his efforts out of the corner of his eye but made no move to push the cakes closer. Nathe looked nonplussed. "An orphanage is where you go when you don't have any parents," Tom explained, painfully aware that several other people were now listening to the conversation. Or any parents that want you another part of his mind added. "It was a-" what was the word? "muggle orphanage, so you see I've never really seen any magic before or knew I was a wizard."

Nathe's fork had stopped half way towards his mouth and he seemed to have quite forgotten it was there. "Didn't know you were a wizard?" he asked, in disbelief.

"No," Tom began, then seeing the horrified look on his new friend's face added, "sorry."

"Then surely," the blonde boy interjected [apparently he too had been listening] a slight sneer catching in his voice, "surely you're not a Mudblood?"

The boy next to him shook his head, causing the braids around his face to sway slightly. "Oh, don't be a fool Eminor… he can't be."

"No, I suppose not," the blonde replied, relaxing slightly and sticking his tongue out at his friend. "And don't call me a fool."

"Mud-blood?" Tom forced himself to ask, hating himself for his ignorance. He could tell it was nothing good from the way the older boy's lip had curled as he formed the word but other than that he might have been speaking Greek for all Tom understood.

Nathe waved his hand dismissively. "Some one with non-magic parents; but as…" he paused.

"Anantole Barton," the darker haired boy supplied. "My feebleminded friend," the blonde took a swipe at him, and Barton laughed. "Alright, alright, my friend here is Eminor Malfoy… but I wouldn't bother listening to anything he says if I were you, so it doesn't really matter."

Nathe grinned and continued. "As Barton says you could hardly be a Mudblood if you ended up in Slytherin… after all the reason Salazar Slytherin left the school in the first place was because the other founders wanted to let them in too."

Tom turned back to his cake and prodded it distractedly with his fork.

"You're not are you?" Nathe asked, laughing slightly as if the whole thing were completely ridiculous.

"No," Tom said, still looking at his desert. "My father died before I was born and my mother followed him soon after I was one… but they were a witch and wizard."

Those around him looked uncomfortable and Nathe murmured something about being very sorry and that he wouldn't bring it up again. Tom forced himself to smile. "It's alright, I never knew them… I just feel really out of touch with this world."

"You'll learn," Nathe assured him, grinning again. "For Merlin's sake even the Hufflepuffs do."

"And at least fifty percent of them are vermin; it's a wonder they ever learn anything," the blonde boy, Eminor, added cheerfully. "Ah," he noted. "It seems dinner is over."

Sure enough several older people, presumably prefects were rising from their seats and the cry of "first years, follow me," echoed around the Great Hall.

Eminor and his friend remained seated as Tom and Nathe joined the other Slytherin first years gathering around their two prefects. As they passed the two boys again Tom grinned and Anantole Barton gave a slight wave before they resumed their conversation and the first years left the Hall.

The young Slytherins trailed along with the Ravenclaws for a while but eventually peeling off towards the dungeons, Nathe, keeping up a constant stream of chatter, appeared to be trying to make up for his amusement at Tom's ignorance of the wizarding world by giving him a running commentary on the wizarding world in relation to Hogwarts. As they walked through the corridors he told Tom about how the portraits moved and talked and how photographs could also move if you developed them properly but couldn't talk, how the stairs changed position on their own and how the mark of a good house elf was that one never saw them so he shouldn't expect to meet any.

However, he appeared to have as little knowledge of muggles as Tom had of wizards and kept pointing out other things like doors and lamps and banisters that Tom was quite aware of already. By the time they reached the end of their journey Nathe had already had another three flashes of impatience [the last, at his friend insisting he knew what a carpet was] but by now Tom had grown used to them and was starting to really like the darker boy whose anger faded as quickly as it arrived and whose often, wicked sense of humour was already starting to show itself.

The prefect leading them, a tall girl with shining black hair loose around her shoulders, stopped next to a solid wall. Tom stopped walking too but a number of other people did not and several of them fell over in the rush to see the common room for the first time. The prefect smiled at their eagerness and informed them the password that would unlock the door was "Veritaserum."

The wall swung open.