Exception

Chapter 4

  Although Tom would never openly admit it, he was actually quite proud of himself for how he had spent his first month at Hogwarts. He and Hadrian both had quickly escalated to the top of their classes and the Slytherin hierarchy, their ability to speak the revered language of serpents was a huge help, though there were a few older years who were pissed at being beaten by two first years and tried to prove that they were better. It hadn't ended well for them. Namely, Zacharias Pucey.

Three weeks before...

  "So...you're Tom Marvolo Riddle, eh? The child prodigy that has teachers drooling after him? I don't see anything special about you, do you boys?" the moment Tom stepped into the common room he was confronted by a sneering Zacharias and his group of goons.

  Tom merely raised an elegant eyebrow, not wanting to waste his breath explaining the Slytherin Hierarchy to him.

  "You will speak to me when I address you!" Tom barely saw the hand coming towards him and only just managed to send a stinging hex at Zacharias' hand to avoid being slapped. Zacharias winced but otherwise showed no sign that it hurt him.

  "How dare you! Do you know who I am?"

  "Zacharias Pucey?" a voice in the watching crowd asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.

  The crowd, which had quickly gathered, parted as Hadrian Potter stepped forward and casually walked to stand by Tom. To say Tom was shocked would be an understatement, but he didn't let that show.

  "You?! Hadrian Potter. Apparently the one who is as powerful as this scum," Zacharias spat out the last word.

  Tom raised an eyebrow at that. He wasn't offended, merely annoyed by Zacharias' inability to get on with things and instead staying stuck in one area, which, in this case, was insulting Tom. Rather,
trying to insult Tom. However, the same couldn't be said for Hadrian. He was infuriated, and his magical aura crackled with anger, though his face betrayed nothing. Tom couldn't figure why he was so angry. It was, after all, Tom that Zacharias was insulting, not him.

  He was quickly distracted, however, by the swift movement of Zacharias' wand. It was pure reflexes that caused Tom to throw up a shield. The spell, which Tom guessed was a cutting curse, rebounded and flew towards one of Zacharias' cronies and hit him square in the chest. The idiot fell to the ground screaming in agony. Hadrian took advantage of this to throw several curses to Zacharias' other cronies. Meanwhile, Tom slashed his wand in quick successions that hit a stunned Zacharias one after another, causing him to fall to the ground, covered in boils and cuts, and his wand in Tom's hand. The common room was dead silent, and the tension was so thick that one could cut it with a knife.

  "I hope that convinces you to not mess with us," Hadrian said quietly, and though his voice held no obvious anger, everyone in the common room, bar Tom, tensed. Just say all the Slytherins respected Tom and Hadrian more after that day and let us leave it at that...

  Tom had gathered a group of... friends, and they wholeheartedly agreed in his perspective: to rise to the top of the wizarding world and to change back to the old wizarding ways that Muggles had tarnished (case in point, Samhain. It used to be a quiet procession and a blood sacrifice to remember and honour those who had left them. Because of Muggles' preposterous ways, Samhain slowly changed in Halloween which completely undermines the point of Samhain in the first place); to ban differentiating of magic; and to place muggle-borns into respectable pure-blood families early on so that they were brought up knowing their ways. They were called the Knights of Walpurgis, strategically named after the infamous Walpurgis Night, when all of Lady Magic's 'dark' children would gather.

  Well, they don't call Slytherins ambitious for nothing.

  Everything was falling into place. Except... except that one piece of the jigsaw that refused to fit. Hadrian. The boy had willingly let Tom occupy the top seat of the Slytherin hierarchy simply because, 'he'd rather not waste his youth on political matters'. His actual words. That was the first time they had actually had a proper conversation that didn't end in Tom getting annoyed.