“I am Professor Dumbledore.”
“‘Professor’?” repeated Riddle. He looked wary. “Is that like ‘doctor’? What are you here for? Did she get you in to have a look at me?”
He was pointing at the door through which Mrs. Cole had just left.
“No, no,” said Dumbledore, smiling.
“I don’t believe you,” said Riddle. “She wants me looked at, doesn’t she? Tell the truth!”
He spoke the last three words with a ringing force that was almost shocking. It was a command, and it sounded as though he had given it many times before. His eyes had widened and he was glaring at Dumbledore, who made no response except to continue smiling pleasantly. After a few seconds Riddle stopped glaring, though he looked, if anything, warier still.
“Who are you?”
“I have told you. My name is Professor Dumbledore and I work at a school called Hogwarts. I have come to offer you a place at my school — your new school, if you would like to come.”
Riddle’s reaction to this was most surprising. He leapt from the bed and backed away from Dumbledore, looking furious.
“You can’t kid me! The asylum, that’s where you’re from, isn’t it? ‘Professor,’ yes, of course — well, I’m not going, see? That old cat’s the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they’ll tell you!”
“I am not from the asylum,” said Dumbledore patiently. “I am a teacher and, if you will sit down calmly, I shall tell you about Hogwarts. Of course, if you would rather not come to the school, nobody will force you —”
“I’d like to see them try,” sneered Riddle.
“Hogwarts,” Dumbledore went on, as though he had not heard Riddle’s last words, “is a school for people with special abilities —”
“I’m not mad!”
“I know that you are not mad. Hogwarts is not a school for mad people. It is a school of magic.”
There was silence. Riddle had frozen, his face expressionless, but his eyes were flickering back and forth between each of Dumbledore’s, as though trying to catch one of them lying.
“Magic?” he repeated in a whisper.
“That’s right,” said Dumbledore.
“It’s . . . it’s magic, what I can do?”
“What is it that you can do?”
“All sorts,” breathed Riddle. A flush of excitement was rising up his neck into his hollow cheeks; he looked fevered. “I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to.”
His legs were trembling. He stumbled forward and sat down on the bed again, staring at his hands, his head bowed as though in prayer.
“I knew I was different,” he whispered to his own quivering fingers. “I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something.”
“Well, you were quite right,” said Dumbledore, who was no longer smiling, but watching Riddle intently. “You are a wizard.”
Riddle lifted his head. His face was transfigured: There was a wild happiness upon it, yet for some reason it did not make him better looking; on the contrary, his finely carved features seemed somehow rougher, his expression almost bestial.
“Are you a wizard too?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Prove it,” said Riddle at once, in the same commanding tone he had used when he had said, “Tell the truth.”
Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. “If, as I take it, you are accepting your place at Hogwarts —”
“Of course I am!”
“Then you will address me as ‘Professor’ or ‘sir.’”
Riddle’s expression hardened for the most fleeting moment before he said, in an unrecognizably polite voice, “I’m sorry, sir. I meant — please, Professor, could you show me — ?”
Harry was sure that Dumbledore was going to refuse, that he would tell Riddle there would be plenty of time for practical demonstrations at Hogwarts, that they were currently in a building full of Muggles and must therefore be cautious. To his great surprise, however, Dumbledore drew his wand from an inside pocket of his suit jacket, pointed it at the shabby wardrobe in the corner, and gave the wand a casual flick.
The wardrobe burst into flames.
Riddle jumped to his feet; Harry could hardly blame him for howling in shock and rage; all his worldly possessions must be in there. But even as Riddle rounded on Dumbledore, the flames vanished, leaving the wardrobe completely undamaged.
Riddle stared from the wardrobe to Dumbledore; then, his expression greedy, he pointed at the wand. “Where can I get one of them?”
“All in good time,” said Dumbledore. “I think there is something trying to get out of your wardrobe.”
And sure enough, a faint rattling could be heard from inside it. For the first time, Riddle looked frightened.
“Open the door,” said Dumbledore.
Riddle hesitated, then crossed the room and threw open the wardrobe door. On the topmost shelf, above a rail of threadbare clothes, a small cardboard box was shaking and rattling as though there were several frantic mice trapped inside it.
“Take it out,” said Dumbledore.
Riddle took down the quaking box. He looked unnerved.
“Is there anything in that box that you ought not to have?” asked Dumbledore.
Riddle threw Dumbledore a long, clear, calculating look. “Yes, I suppose so, sir,” he said finally, in an expressionless voice.
“Open it,” said Dumbledore.
Riddle took off the lid and tipped the contents onto his bed without looking at them. Harry, who had expected something much more exciting, saw a mess of small, everyday objects: a yo-yo, a silver thimble, and a tarnished mouth organ among them. Once free of the box, they stopped quivering and lay quite still upon the thin blankets.