Too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow.
― Amy Tan

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I lead Tom to the outskirts of the town that he had momentarily destroyed.

"What are we doing?" Tom scowls at me, "Dumbledore."

I ignore him. We reach an untouched patch of snow, and I wave my hand, casting a spell so we wouldn't freeze to death or get wet. "Sit." I grin at him and plop down on the snow before him.

He eyes me warily and looks at me in disgust. "Why are we here?" He snarls, making my grin widen.

"I'm going to teach you the healing spell you wanted to learn."

He stares at me silently, but the gleam in his eyes has me knowing I made the right choice by trying to get his mind off his mum.

"And the one you performed allowing us to break into that disgusting old hag's home." He gives a loathsome look, and I chuckle.

"She could've put a better robe on." I agree with him.

"She could've put a better everything on."

I laugh, and then he sighs, motioning with his hand. "Get on with it, Dumbledore." He scowls.

We sat facing each other, both of us crisscrossed on the snow. I'd put out all the flames, Tom had caused to my immense relief.

"So, you need to be able to channel your magic like a whip," I tell him and unleash my magic. "It's another limb. An extension of you." I shoot my magic out to the side, and it returns back to me instantly. "That's the first step." I beam at him.

He was staring at me with that same intelligent look he always wore when we were in class. "That's magnificent." He breathes, staring at my magic in barely concealed awe.

I blink at him, staring in shock. "I think that's the first compliment that you have ever given me." I grin, teasingly. He sends me a deadly glare.

"You might be a significant pain, annoyance, ugly troll, insignificant wanker-" I interrupt him before he can continue his long list of insults.

"Riddle." I scowl, giving him a look.

"- and the most infuriating, godawful person I've ever had the displeasure of meeting-" He continues, ignoring me entirely. "But, even I can't deny your obvious power and mastery of magic." He spits the last words out like he couldn't believe he was saying them. He continued to have a sour expression on his face, glaring at me.

My grin grows. "Thank you." I chirp, clapping my hands in glee. I was holding this over his head for the next couple of years. By the lethal look of hate on his face, it looked like he knew it too.

"So whip. Use your magic like a whip." I order him, causing him to glare at me. "What's the easiest way of doing it?" He scowls.

I purse my lips thinking for a second and then my eyes widen as I get an idea. "Lumos," I say and fling a ball of light into my fingers. Tom watches me, a predatory look in his eyes. "So you see this? This has magic in it, of course." I muse. "If you look closely at it, you can see the little specks of magic that lie in the light." I hold it close and genuinely, you could see the magic I usually wielded. Tom wears an appreciative look on his face.

"So just focus your inner magic on the magic in your hand. It gets easier with practice." I say and then stare at it, unfolding the ball of light in my palm by controlling the magic inside. The light sputters out, and the ball of light it'd once been stretched out into a wave of sparkling beautiful twinkling magic. I wave my hand, and it starts to fly around us, encircling us.

"After you can do that, the spells I did before will be easy to do."

He nods, soaking up the information I told him eagerly. He flicks his palm open, and I see a ball of light appear in his palm. He stares at it brow creasing in concentration.

He looks up at me in frustration after a minute and my mind whirls for a second. "Order it," I tell him and he raises a brow in question.

"Order the magic to move," I demand, playing to Tom's strengths. He was a natural-born leader. Tom tilts his head to the side, deep in thought, and then he stares at the ball of light in his palm.

"Move." He snarls, and I can hear the raw power in his voice and see the intense look in his eyes. I watch, intrigued as the ball of light sputters out, similar to how mine did. It collapses into a heap on his palm. With a swish of his hand, the magic flies around us, joining in with my own.

"Excellent!!" I beam at him. Tom wore a look of arrogance and pride on his face. My first time doing something like that went about similar to his. I wasn't going to tell him that I had got it on my third try, while he got it on his second. He'd never let me live it down.

"Yours was dark magic," Tom states suddenly, and I nod, allowing the dark waves to surface from my palms.

"It's the exact same concept." I murmur, watching as the darkness flowed around us and through my fingertips, like water.

"Try conjuring pure magic from your hands instead of using Lumos first. Then we'll work on dark magic if you really want to." I cringe a bit.

I was teaching the future Lord Voldemort how to do dark magic. Lovely.

He does it without a second thought, and I couldn't help but admire the raw talent and power the boy in front of me had.

"Next." He smirks at me, making me roll my eyes.

"Same thing Riddle. Just use dark magic instead of the usual." I tell him, and he scowls.

I see him mutter a spell, and once I see the flames erupt from his hands, I'm throwing myself to the side. The curse flies out of Tom's palm and causes a tree to explode behind us.

"TOM!" I snarl and shove him in my anger. "Did I tell you to conjure a dark curse!" I whine, and he shrugs.

"You didn't, but I enjoyed that."

"Enjoyed almost seeing me blown up!?" I hiss, making him scoff.

"You could've deflected it."

"If I hadn't seen that-"

"But you did." He interrupts cooly, making me take a steadying breath.

"Just conjure the magic like you did before, using dark magic instead!" I snap, moving slowly back to my place in front of him. "NO, curses!" I demand at him the second he opened his palm again. He sends me a nasty look.

He manages to do it on his first try, making me smile. "I'm such a good teacher," I smirk, making Tom give me an unamused look.

"I'm a marvellous student. Without my skill, you wouldn't be able to teach a toad." He dismisses me in a second.

"I taught you, didn't I?" I mutter under my breath, hoping he didn't hear me, but he did because he was the one shoving me this time.

I roll my eyes at him and lift myself out from the snow I'd charmed to stay warm.

"Next, Dumbledore. Come on, girl, we haven't got all day." Tom jeers.

"It's night time, actually."

"I'm one second away from continuing our duel from the courtyard." He warns me, and I chuckle.

"As if you'd want to. I would've won that."

"Not even in your dreams, Dumbledore." He sneers. I walk around, calling my magic back to me. Tom sees what I was doing and does the same thing. I realize he was an impeccable visual learner. A trait we both shared.

"The curse you used to break into the hag's home?" He orders me in an emotionless tone, and I nod, thinking of how to teach it to him.

"It's a dark curse," I tell him, making him nods. "So you need your dark magic." I muse, conjuring said magic up in my hands. The orbs pulsed in my hands, exceedingly unstable.

"You control it and allow it to engulf your entire body." I continue, demonstrating it. Tom copies me, looking deathly interested.

"Now what?" He snaps, eager to learn it. I walk over to a tree, and I grin at him. His eyes watched my every movement.

"Now you say the same spell over and over again while you are moving through the inanimate object... Propta Eam." I say out loud and then stick my hand through the tree, saying the spell over and over again. I stop saying it, and then my hand gets stuck inside the tree.

"The second you stop saying the spell, you're stuck in the inanimate object." I continue, whipping my hand out of the tree as I start repeating the spell again.

"It's tricky because if your mouth gets stuck in an inanimate object, you can't really speak anymore, right? So you would essentially die of lack of oxygen unless you know nonverbal magic, which in our case will save our arses." I explain and watch as Riddle walks over.

"Propta Eam." He chants and sticks his hand in the tree I'd used.

"There you go." I cheer, and he looks over at me, a pleased gleam in his eyes.

"That is simple." He points out. I shrug.

"I told you it would be."

I see the cut on his face from where the panther had scratched him. I wave my hand over his face. The cut was deep, and it stitches up with my spell.

Tom whips around to stare at me. "Why'd you do that?"

"Because it looked deep," I answer.

"I didn't need your help."

"I helped anyways," I say mindlessly, causing him to scowl at me.

"Insufferable girl." He sneers, making me roll my eyes.

"At least I'm not an arrogant prick."

A twig breaks, causing us to freeze. Tom and I glance at each other before whirling around at the same time. There he was.

Grindelwald.

He was sneering at us, and I realize that there were people everywhere. Around eleven deadly wizards and witches stood in a circle around us.

We were surrounded.

Sadness is the ambrosia of all art.
― Frances Fong