At first, I think, Tom and I were equally unpopular.

No, at first Tom had it worse than I did. I didn't quite realize it at the time, though I had a nagging suspicion, but you didn't go into Slytherin if you were penniless. More, you didn't go into Slytherin if you weren't from the wizarding world's aristocracy.

Tom and I, to these people, were the equivalent of trailer trash and Tom showing up in Slytherin was the equivalent of someone from Appalechia stepping onto the doorstep of Eton.

It just was not done.

I fared better if only because I had picked the reclusive but hardly as rich house of Ravenclaw.

However, Tom was nothing if not determined, and in the first weeks alone the sneers and harassment stopped, like it had all never happened in the first place. More, by the second month in October, it was like they had all forgotten just who Tom was and where he had come from. Even in the orphanage it hadn't quite been like that, it had taken some of them years to fear Tom, and even then, even when they feared him, they would still put on this bravado to show that they didn't.

Dennis, for example, had never learned to keep his mouth shut.

This wasn't like that though, either stage. First the fear and ignoring, and then the pandering to him, the strange strained camaraderie where Abraxas Malfoy would show up to our table in the library and tell me that he was inviting Tom to go see the quidditch game. Never an invitation for Lizzie Riddle, not until Tom would give Abraxas a pointed and reprimanding look that of course his beloved sister was invited. It was like Tom became a part of this gang, no, not just a part, but the unquestioned leader of all of them for seemingly no reason at all.

That probably was the first sign, of Tom's ambitions as well as his potential, that he could win over these people so set against him within a month. However, I wasn't there first hand to see it, I was in Ravenclaw and so I could only watch in wonder and ask how he'd done it.

And he'd just smile and raise a finger to his lips in the library, wink at me, and say, "A magician never reveals his secrets, Lizzie."

I still can't quite figure it out if I'm honest except that…

Tom has charisma. It wasn't all that noticeable in the orphanage, if only because he had no real need for it, we weren't going anywhere and were stuck with each other forever. However, in Hogwarts, his charisma became everything. Sometimes, if you looked at him, you could almost swear he was glowing, especially when he smiled. He drew the eye and forced it to linger, so that I imagine even if you hated him you couldn't help but watch.

But I wasn't like that. For all that we're related I have never been like that and more, I have never gotten along with my peers. Hogwarts, for me, was just… a larger and wealthier orphanage. I suddenly had adequate meals, interesting enough reading material in the library and this strange new world but I…

I could never connect to people my own age, I felt like I was talking down to them so often, and I hated that. I didn't want to be that person and I railed against it, except railing against it turned out to mean introversion and a type of overwhelming loneliness where the gap between Tom and myself both seemed wider and non-existent as others drifted away. Within the month, I think, I gave up on any chance of a real human relationship outside of my brother, at least, not until I was an adult and out of this place.

So, where Tom flourished, in the beginning I felt as if I was stagnating and waiting for the future to unfold so that I could run and chase it already. I had no idea where I was going and what I might do only that I suddenly wanted to be there, out in the real world, wizarding or muggle and…

And I suppose it doesn't really matter anyway, after all, I never got the chance. My future and Tom's, I didn't know it then, but they were mutually exclusive. We couldn't both get what we wanted.

Tom only had two classes with Lizzie during a given week. Charms and Transfiguration, just those two, that was it, and the rest was spent with either the Gryffindors or the Hufflepuffs.

That wall he'd sensed at the sorting wasn't just a wall, no, it was something far more impenetrable and dramatic than that. Suddenly she was just… gone. Not entirely, not truly, but he didn't share a room with her, didn't share every waking moment, and so often during his day in classes she wouldn't be there at all.

At breakfast she sat a few tables away, flipping through books beneath the banner of the large crow while Tom sat in the midst of his rather nervous houesmates, ignoring the way they constantly looked at him. Well, the way they looked at him during that first week.

Oh, they'd learned very quickly what the orphans had learned, that you don't fuck with Tom Riddle. That Tom Marvolo Riddle was made of something harder, colder, and better than them and there was nothing they could do but submit to it.

These people had been born into money, into wealth, and into privlege so when it came down to it though they had talked very tough that first night the first one had started sobbing in the first ten minutes. Sobbing and shaking in terror as Tom had wandlessly done what they could only dream of, as he whispered in his ear that he knew they thought they were funny, that it was all a lark, but they had fucked up more than they could possibly imagine.

So, a week in, and they were already sparing him wary almost awed glances, and not one of them whispering to Slughorn that their dormmate the mudblood had beat the ever-loving shit out of the lot of them.

And for once, it had been so easy. Lizzie hadn't been standing there over his shoulder, looking at him with those sad disapproving eyes, there hadn't been any justification for hours on hours afterwards and that willful stubbornness of hers. There hadn't been anything at all, and when he'd seen her in Charms the next morning she'd smiled at him like she'd been missing him and it had been…

So easy, and that made him feel… He didn't know, only that he didn't like that separating like this made him in any way happy. Except it did, it really did.

And maybe because of that, or maybe because he did just miss her, he'd make sure to sit next to her in every class they shared together, to study with her in the library (also to get away from his dormmates who wanted him anywhere but in the Slytherin common room). He wouldn't even say anything most of the time, just sit there and watch the way the light fell on her dark hair and wonder if she'd grown taller when he wasn't looking or else if he'd just never noticed before.

She looked very much like him, almost like she could be an identical twin, but there were small differences he'd never noticed. Her eyes were a shade darker, her hair a bit wavier and thicker than his own as well as a shade lighter, there were small almost indistinguishable freckles dotting her pale nose…

It was still almost like looking at his face in a mirror but not quite.

And at the end of the day she'd smile, that small soft thing, say goodnight and walk away to wherever the Ravenclaw tower was hidden while Tom could only watch and wonder how she could walk away so easily.

She didn't talk about her housemates and he didn't talk about his, just the schoolwork, and sometimes the orphanage. And he loved that, but he hated that he loved that. He just wished… If she wasn't so stubborn, if she wasn't so narrow minded and philosophical, then he wouldn't have to feel this way and she would be in Slytherin and there wouldn't be any problem at all!

They were currently sitting in Transfiguration, listening to Dumbledore lecture again, dressed as always in an eyewatering suit that should never have seen the light of day, and as always Dumbledore was glancing over towards Lizzie that spark of fondness in his eyes. Tom's hand tightened on his wand, his knuckles turning white as he gritted his teeth.

Dumbledore, it turned out, picked favorites and he picked them early. He'd probably already decided when he first met them in Wools, that he would hate Tom, but love Lizzie. Tom didn't know exactly what it was he had said or did that had set Dumbledore off. No, that was a lie, he knew exactly what it was. Mrs. Cole must have told him about Dennis and Amy, about Billy Stubbs' rabbit, about all the things that she always knew Tom had done but could never prove.

All the same though, for whatever reason, even though Mrs. Cole had always blamed Lizzie just as much, Dumbledore adored her.

Maybe it was because, in Transfiguration at least, Tom had to admit Lizzie was slightly better. She'd read the book enough times, had the thing memorized before they showed up, and while Tom was still second best by miles Lizzie had still turned a matchstick into a needle faster than he had on that first day of class.

That had… It had hurt. Sure, Tom had gotten it a few minutes later, and still did it before anyone else who were still struggling the next week even with the same exercise. Except Tom had been so ready, after Defense and Potions, to be just a little better than she was at something, anything.

And she didn't even seem to notice, just kept watching Dumbledore's lecture the way she'd watch any other professor lecture, and Tom hated it.

"Now, who here can tell me, from our last quiz, what the only thing in the world is that can turn lead into gold? Anyone?"

Tom's hand rose into the sky, Dumbledore glanced over it, searching the room until he landed on some mousey Ravenclaw, "Ah, yes, Mary."

"The philosopher's stone, sir," she said, a note of pride in her voice, as if the ability to read was something she should be proud of.

"Excellent, one point to Ravenclaw, and who made it?" another search of the room, another ignoring of Tom's hand, this time landing on Abraxas Malfoy, "Yes, Abraxas."

"Nicholas Flamel, sir," the boy preened, gave Tom a particularly smug look, as if it was a slight on Tom's intelligence or blood that he hadn't been chosen by Dumbledore for reading comprehension.

"Good work, a point to Slytherin, we're neck and neck today," Dumbledore said with a cheerful smile, clapping his hands and rubbing them together, like they were all just pals.

"Now, turning led into gold, that sounds a lot like Transfiguration, doesn't it? And yet, Nicholas Flamel is an alchemist. So, can anyone tell me, take a guess, at why he's one and not the other?" this was always a tactic of Dumbledore, warm up with the easy questions, the basic ones to build confidence, and then ask something a little harder and see who would take the bait. It rarely had anything to do with the lesson itself, undoubtedly they'd be moving back on to matchsticks and needles soon enough, but he always started out this way.

And always, every single time, it'd fall to Lizzie.

"Anyone?"

Tom raised his hand, more out of spite than a true answer, although if Dumbledore wanted a stab in the dark then goddamn it all Tom could bloody give it to him as well as anyone else. As well as Lizzie, even.

No one else raised their hand, not even Lizzie who was giving Tom a side-eyed look as he just raised his hand higher. Finally when the silence went on too long, Lizzie hesitantly, slowly, lifted her hand and gave into the pressure. The only other hand in the air beside Tom's.

"Yes, Elizabeth," Dumbledore said, and you could tell he had just been waiting for her to give in already.

"Honestly, I think it's semantics," Lizzie said, "Alchemy falls under the general umbrella of transfiguration but with some of the practical aspects of potions. At its heart though, it's the process of changing one substance into another, an element into another, and I can't think of anything that's more transfiguration than that even if you don't use a wand quite as much."

"Very good answer," Dumbledore said, "And she is very correct, alchemy, despite the potions, despite the runes and the arithmancy, is in fact transfiguration. A very advanced, very niche, field of transfiguration but transfiguration none the less. Now, you're probably wondering why I'm bringing this up. Well, first, alchemy is a specialty of mine and I love to talk about it, but second, it shows that transfiguration is in nearly every higher branch of magic. Transfiguration is important in ways you'd never even dream of, and something as daunting or simple as turning a matchstick into a needle opens up whole realms of possibilities. Transfiguration, quite literally, can change your very world. Now, that said, one more time we're going to continue that first practical exercise and then next week move onto broader horizions…"

Dumbledore continued talking, drawing on the board and splitting up the class to go help their peers. Tom would be working with Crabbe and Goyle and the others who after two days still hadn't gotten it while Lizzie would tend to the dimmer Ravenclaws (and what a fate, he thought with a sneer, to be a stupid Ravenclaw).

And all Tom could think was that even though it was easier in some ways, even though it was sometimes refreshing, he didn't like that Dumbledore was cutting into his time with his sister. He didn't have much of it to spare these days, interhouse relationships were turning out to be anything but easy, and Dumbledore was knowingly cutting into that.

He probably thought she didn't mind but Tom could tell that she was bored out of her bloody mind. She had that slightly glazed look, helpful enough, but that internal sigh as she looked down at a blubbering Ravenclaw girl who just wasn't getting it and probably never would.

Tom for his own part felt much the same way as he looked down at fat bulky Crabbe, still trying and failing, who was now hissing at Tom, "Don't need your help, Riddle."

Tom did not wish to give him his bloody help and had he been at Wools wouldn't have except…

Except he wasn't at Wools.

He'd realized that in these past few weeks that everything had changed. In Wools there had been no point putting on a show because it would have changed nothing. Tom and Lizzie would always be poor unwanted orphans there. Here though, here there was money everywhere, a way out and if Tom could connect to these people…

So, he just thinly smiled, a polite thing that would impress Dumbledore (except that it didn't) and had Crabbe go slightly pale as he remembered the last time Tom had smiled like that and he had ended up in the hospital wing. Politely, he said, "Well then, Crabbe, just let me know when you do."

And it was nice, he thought, that Lizzie was too wrapped up in her own world for once to notice. That perhaps, perhaps it was good that they kept their distance for now, because it gave Tom the opportunity he needed inside of this school. As if it was only now, outside of the shadow of his sister and her all-seeing eyes, that he could stretch his wings and reach all that he had the potential to be.

He'd leave Lizzie to that world inside of her head, filled with infinite worlds and their possibilties and thousands upon thousands of stories, while Tom would take reality by storm.

Author's Note: Next time expect that development of Tom being buddy buddy with people he despises and more character development in general.

Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter