Two minutes later, Joan's small frame was curled up in Tom's arms.
Her eyes were shut, and her lips moved through a devout prayer.
Tom shifted her weight in his arms, quietly testing it. Light. Hardly anything at all.
This was probably how her body had been in the final stretch before her death. She had been on battlefields and could still charge at the front of a line, but being born to an ordinary farming family had settled her childhood diet for good, and her body had never caught up with her age.
Never mind. Once she was resurrected, he could build her up slowly.
Her Approval had already been raised to a hundred, but Tom had no intention of neglecting the bond between them. How to put it... He wanted Joan to become an ordinary person, one who understood and supported everything he did, instead of someone shackled by so-called faith.
Lying a girl into bed was fun for a night. Lying to her forever, though... that stopped being interesting.
From where he stood now, though, the goal was still a long way off. Even a con that no fool would swallow, Joan had accepted without a flicker of doubt. Setting her straight was going to be a monumental task.
"Knowledge changes fate, huh..."
Tom sighed inwardly. Converted to Oxford Reading Tree levels, Joan's current education came to about Level 3.
What did that mean? The Oxford Reading Tree was a beginner reading series officially recommended in Britain, with strictly graded stages that ran from Level 1 (age three) all the way up to Level 20 (age sixteen). In other words, Joan's schooling put her about on par with a four-year-old. Aside from certain things to do with war, of course.
Once she knew more, she would start to wonder on her own whether the ideas she'd held all along made any sense.
Hm?
Tom looked down. The girl's prayer had faded to nothing, and little by little it had turned into slow, even breathing.
Asleep? Tom didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. What had happened to the praying? Since when was he a body pillow?
He moved with extra care after that. One step, and his Spatial Authority carried him straight into Joan's little nest. He waited until she had sunk a bit deeper into sleep before laying her down on the bed, then slipped out and headed for the meditation room to carry on with the day's studies.
...
"By the way, Tom, what was that spell yesterday? The one that called up those strange figures. I've never come across it in any book."
Hermione asked it out of nowhere during Care of Magical Creatures, while she scrubbed the mud out of a Niffler's fur.
Her hair was a good few inches shorter than it had been the day before, and her face was still pale. Yesterday's training had put her through the wringer. Even with Tom deliberately holding back the power, it was the first time in her life she had been hurt by magic. Luckily, Tom had prepared for that well in advance. One bottle of potion poured down her throat and the injuries had mended quickly. Only the hair needed time to grow back.
"Oh, that." Tom snatched up a Niffler as it bolted past, produced a Galleon to settle it down, and dragged a toothbrush through its fur without much effort. "It's a spell I made myself. Still only half finished."
"Half finished?" Hermione was startled.
Yesterday, those figures of light had been like enchanted cannon emplacements, firing Blasting Curses one after another, no wand, no incantation. Anyone who watched it would have felt their scalp prickle. And Tom was calling that unfinished?
"Yeah. Right now I can only summon one or two magic spirits at a time, and I have to control them myself. They don't have enough awareness of their own. Once it's fully formed, it won't be this much trouble."
Hermione's face was so full of longing that Tom swallowed whatever he'd been about to say.
"Don't think about it for now. It's a very hard spell. You'd need a deep grasp of the basics before you're even qualified to consider it. When you're ready, I'll teach you. I promise."
Only then did the little witch nod, happy again.
Tom watched Hermione, whose mood could flip faster than a turning page, and let out a helpless breath. He finally understood why the Sorting Hat had dithered so long over her house. When it came to knowledge, her appetite was pure Ravenclaw.
She might have thrived even more there. In Ravenclaw, knowing a lot and reading a lot really was enough to earn respect. It was nothing like the tangle that was Gryffindor.
Gryffindors were honestly the hardest lot to deal with, and the hardest to figure out. Study well and they called you a bookworm. Say little and you were unsociable. Showing off and breaking school rules were perfectly fine, but the moment you got caught and cost the house points, they turned on you and told you that you had no house pride.
Tom figured that if he had been Sorted into Gryffindor, he would have punched ten times as many people as he had in Slytherin.
Snakes at least knew how to read a room and fold when they couldn't win. Lions didn't. They only dug in harder and refused to back down. Ever since the Whomping Willow business, plenty of them still bristled whenever he walked past.
When class ended, under the Niffler's despairing gaze, Tom fished the Galleons he had stuffed into its belly pouch back out and strolled away.
"Fawkes."
The boy called softly. Almost at once, the phoenix arrived, riding in on a flash of flame.
If Dumbledore had seen it, he would have had mixed feelings. He didn't summon Fawkes nearly as smoothly as Tom did, and Fawkes had never answered him this fast.