What was your first year of school like? Slytherins value blood purity and seem to know everyone who is pure, so how were you treated as an unknown to them? As an 11 year old, how did you take in Hogwarts compared to the orphan life you knew up to that point?
It was a struggle, but a very different struggle than the beginning of my childhood.
At first, I was too in awe to really care about the perceptions of the others. This phase only lasted a few days, but, for one such as myself, that is quite a while.
The amount of food, the warmth, the beds with new, clean linens, the grounds and classrooms. The way the staircases moved and the subjects of portraits spoke to you...It was the best and yet most disorienting time of my life.
The Slytherins were very curious about me from the start. The Sorting Hat barely had to touch my head to make a decision. It generally only did this to the children of long, well-established pure-blood families, so immediately everyone began to inquire of my parentage. Many students were shocked they didn’t already know me.
I told them a variation of the truth - I was deposited at the doorstep of a muggle orphanage as an infant with nothing but my name and birthdate. I left out that whole bit about my mother dying. It seemed messy.
Some of the others decided they wanted little to do with me, but others...they saw me as a mystery to unlock, a challenge. They urged me to look into my lineage, showed me the immense library - oh, the library! Seeing it for the first time was like stepping into a dream. I have always said, if I had to choose a house other than Slytherin, it would have been Ravenclaw.
I worked incredibly hard in school during all my years at Hogwarts, but I believe my first year was the hardest. I knew I had to rise to the top of the class. It was a matter of survival, of acceptance. I needed it, like air.
I learned not to ask too many questions about wizard culture, instead turning to the library whenever I had an inquiry I knew would make me sound childish or stupid. It was how I learned about the workings of the Ministry of Magic, of Quidditch, even of the currency system. I practically memorized “Hogwarts: A History.”
When I did trace my name to the Gaunt family, the very first thing I did was to cross-check it with the sacred twenty eight. It was only then I shared my name with my associates.
By this point, the general reaction was “I knew it, Tom, you had to be a pure-blood, you had to be.”
It was a high my thirteen year old self couldn’t quite get enough of.
