A middle-aged woman shoved through the police cordon and came sprinting toward the café.
"Catherine, my daughter, where are you?!"
She looked around frantically as she shouted her daughter's name at the top of her lungs.
The little girl in Marvolio's arms lit up the moment she heard her name. She twisted around and waved both hands hard in her mother's direction.
"Mum, I'm here!"
"Catherine!"
The woman spotted her daughter and immediately let out a breath of relief.
But the moment she saw her daughter's tiny body in the arms of an unidentified man, she nearly lost her mind. If the situation here hadn't been so unusual, she really might have.
Paying no attention at all to the still-raging flames and smoke, the mother rushed straight up to Marvolio.
"Catherine, come here. To Mum."
Catherine turned back to look at Marvolio, clearly reluctant to go, but when she saw the encouraging look in his eyes, she could only pout and let her mother pull her into her arms, looking back every few steps.
Marvolio stood up with a smile, watching as her mother carefully checked Catherine over. But from the corner of his eye, he noticed the sergeant approaching them tensely.
"Sir, this may be a bit presumptuous, but I'd still like to ask... was it you who stopped the explosion?"
The sergeant was not entirely sure Marvolio had done it, but considering he had appeared out of nowhere, and was the only adult here besides the police, it was hard not to treat him as a likely suspect.
Marvolio had no intention of hiding it anyway. An explosion on this scale was impossible to explain away cleanly, even with a Memory Charm. There was no way to account for how the blast had been neutralized.
Better to admit it openly. That was exactly what Tver's office was for, wasn't it?
"This was a weapon secretly developed by the military. Once they heard what was happening here, they sent me over to assist you."
Marvolio delivered the line with a perfectly straight face. It sounded a little strange, but it was the Joint Operations Office's standard internal explanation.
Besides, the Prime Minister and the upper levels of government would provide all the credibility that explanation needed.
"But that was over a ton of explosives. It could have leveled this whole area, including those office buildings!"
The sergeant stared at him in shock.
In his mind, saying that miraculous barrier was technology was even harder to believe than if Marvolio had simply admitted he had superpowers.
And Marvolio had clearly teleported just now. How could that possibly be technology?
"If you have questions, call the Joint Operations Office. Someone there will explain it to you. You just need to follow normal procedure..." Marvolio pointed at the flames, which were slowly shrinking now that the fuel had burned down. "...and clean up the mess here."
"But... how are we supposed to explain this to the public...?"
"There's no need. You just need to keep your mouths shut," Marvolio said, looking down at him.
Of course, that was also the office's standard approach.
Catherine frowned in confusion, but when she saw Marvolio wink at her, she broke into a happy smile instead.
Her mother, on the other hand, only looked more wary.
"So this gentleman is the one who saved my daughter?"
"He didn't just save your daughter. He saved dozens of police officers, and over a hundred people nearby who hadn't finished evacuating yet!" the sergeant said excitedly.
But the mother cared most about her daughter.
"All right. I'm very grateful for your help. My name is Joanne, and I'm Catherine's mother. May I know the name of the man who saved my child?"
Marvolio paused, seeming strangely conflicted.
"Of course, if you don't want to say, then just pretend I never..."
"No. My name is Tom Riddle," Marvolio said, sounding oddly relieved.
"Tom Marvolio Riddle. I prefer it when people call me Marvolio."
He deliberately emphasized the last part, even though no one understood why anyone would prefer to be called by their middle name.
"All right, Mr. Marvolio. Thank you again for helping us. But it's getting late, and I need to take Catherine home."
Joanne did not want to sound that rude, but her young daughter's odd behavior, combined with the caution life had taught her, made her instinctively want to keep her distance from Marvolio.
"I understand," Marvolio replied with a smile. "If you need it, I can take you home as well."
"With that ability you used just now?" Catherine's eyes lit up at once, and she immediately wanted to experience what it felt like to have superpowers.
"No. We don't need any abilities at all." Joanne shut down her daughter's little scheme with the effortless authority only a mother could wield.
"We're going home, Catherine."
She glanced at the truck, now blasted so badly it was barely recognizable, and at the crater it had left behind. Her wariness toward Marvolio rose again.
She immediately took her daughter's hand firmly and walked off without looking back, already beginning to wonder whether they ought to move somewhere else.
As a mother, Joanne would much rather her daughter stay ordinary than be exposed to things this strange and impossible to understand.
"But..." Catherine turned back reluctantly. "Will we see each other again?"
Marvolio had been spending a lot of time in the café lately, but her sensitive little heart seemed to have already realized that the two of them did not really belong to the same world.
"There will be another chance. I promise," Marvolio said softly.
Catherine immediately beamed. In her eyes, Superman would never lie.
After the two of them had gone, the sergeant looked nervously at the silent Marvolio.
"While I'm very grateful for your help, I still have to remind you that certain kinds of affection may not be entirely in line with the law..."
"...She and I are friends." Marvolio rolled his eyes speechlessly.
...
Meanwhile, at the Joint Operations Office, Tver was, as usual, summarizing the day's work.
With Voldemort inexplicably scaling back his activities, the office's workload had dropped noticeably.
At this rate, before long he would be able to relax again.
Knock knock knock. Creak.
Marvolio strolled in like he owned the place and casually tossed a letter onto the desk. Now that the knot in his heart had been untied, he even looked a little carefree.
Tver glanced at the envelope. It was a letter from Hagrid. But instead of opening it right away, he gave Marvolio a teasing look.
"Well, well. You disappeared for so long I thought you'd gotten scared of Voldemort and decided to run."
He said it casually, but seeing the relaxed look on Marvolio's face still gave him a flicker of relief.
It was almost like watching a son finally grow up...
"What's there to be afraid of? It's just one little Voldemort." Marvolio waved a hand dismissively and poured himself a glass of pumpkin juice.
"So," Tver said, looking at him with satisfaction, "you've finally figured out where you want to go from here?"
A smile tugged at the corner of Marvolio's mouth.
"That's right. I've decided. Starting today, I'm going to work hard to become a..."
"Superman!"
"???"