Worth a Thousand Words

Dumbledore had explained the cause of Tom's abrupt departure, and Harry had been driving everyone crazy by pacing ever since they'd returned to the common room.

"Can't you sit down for a few minutes?" Hermione asked.

Harry perched on the arm of a chair, his tapping foot completely out of sync with the fingers he began to drum on the table. "I just wish I knew where he was, Hermione. I know exactly what he must feel like."

"Didn't Ginny go looking for him?"

"Yes, I think so -- maybe we should go looking for her?"

"Maybe we should," Ron began, then blinked as his sister -- sans cloak and with the front of her robe wet up to the knees -- stepped into the room. "Or maybe not."

Harry sat bolt upright and accidentally slid off the arm of the chair with a thud. "Ginny! Did you find him? Is he all right? Does he need help, or...?"

"Yes, and... I don't know." Ginny sighed and curled up in a chair close to the fire. "He's upset... I can see why... I don't think he wanted me to stay any longer, though, so I left."

Harry flopped back into his chair. "Yeah, I can just bet. Is there something we could do to cheer him up? Maybe... find another picture, like Hagrid did for me?"

"Where?" Ginny asked practically. "Hagrid got them from friends of your parents, didn't he?"

"Yes... oh, I see what you mean, we don't even know her name, much less whether any of her friends are still alive."

"Wizards can live a long time," Hermione said thoughtfully, closing her book, "and we could ask someone -- maybe Dumbledore knows her name, for instance -- but it could take a while to do the research." She paused. "Wait! They make a book of photos of all the seventh-years and various events each year -- there's a whole collection in the library, over in a corner where nobody ever seems to go." She stopped rather suddenly, then went on quickly, "I looked it up in Hogwarts: A History; Hogwarts instituted annual photographic records shortly after the advent of photography. You can see the developments in the early ones... it's very interesting to compare; wizards changed them to color almost immediately...."

Harry snapped his fingers; Hermione stopped again. "That's right, Dumbledore was a professor here when Tom was first here, I saw -- " He coughed, and flickered a glance at Ginny. "Well, he'd probably know who she was, is the thing. I could go ask, and then we could look at those."

"You do that. And I'll look up how to make copies quickly... we'll need some paper or parchment that will take the picture...." Hermione seemed to have perked up at the prospect of more research.

"Colin could help," Ginny suggested. She gave Harry an odd look when he flinched slightly. "He's good with pictures. He might already know about the copying."

"Yes, he certainly takes enough of them. That's a good idea, though."

"Ginny, just where did you find him?" Ron broke in, eyeing her robes. "Wading?"

"No, the Quidditch field."

Harry wrinkled his nose. "That's always a marsh when it's been damp out. No wonder he went out there to feel miserable. Well, the sooner we find that picture, the sooner we can maybe get him back inside."

"Yes, go ask Dumbledore. I know Slytherin was supposed to be from a swamp," Hermione muttered, "but that's just ridiculous."

Harry popped out of his chair and headed for the portrait hole. "Be back soon!"

They scattered, Hermione for the library and Ginny -- with Ron in tow -- in search of Colin. They reconvened in the library, drawing odd looks from Madam Pince this close to dinner. Although that might have had something to do with Colin's collection of photographic equipment.

Harry skidded into the library, out of breath. "Okay. Dumbledore said...." He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "Dumbledore said her name -- maiden name, I asked -- was 'Mary Echidne,' and he didn't know exactly when she finished, but probably somewhere in the 1920's."

"Well, that makes sense," Hermione said absently, pulling out the entire stack of the 1920s and depositing them on the table before starting to flip through 1929. "I wonder if there were wizard Flappers?"

Harry slid 1920 out from under the rest. "I forgot to ask what House she was in. That probably would've been more help -- probably Slytherin, though, I'd think. Flappers?"

"She was in Slytherin," Ginny put in absently. "That's part of why he wanted to be."

"That helps." Hermione paged quickly through the E's for Slytherin, then set 1929 aside and picked up 1927, since the intervening one was in Ginny's lap. After a moment she held it up triumphantly, holding the pages open to display the likeness of a dark-haired girl with sparkling green eyes and dress robes to match. "Hah! I've found her."

"She's pretty," Colin observed. "Wait, '27... Hold on, will you?" He stood up and scurried off to another part of the library while the rest blinked after him in surprise. He was back before they could do more than wonder, though, looking very pleased. "I'm not the first student photographer at Hogwarts, see, and they've made up albums before -- I'm going to do one, maybe two if I have enough photos. They don't cover quite all the years, though, so I didn't want to say anything ahead of time, but this one's by someone who finished in 1926 so there might be some of her."

"That's good work, Colin." Harry came and looked over his shoulder; Colin handed him the book and busied himself with his photography equipment.

"I brought a little book, just in case we did find more." Colin glanced surreptitiously toward the front desk and carefully poured a flask of some potion that looked like iridescent quicksilver into a shallow wooden bowl. "Hermione, could you stir this until it thins out a bit, please?"

He and Ginny were copying over the fourth photograph from the album, which involved pressing the papers with a potion-soaked cloth (standard materials, it seemed, fortunately enough) that had to be kept very smooth -- they'd finally wrapped the cloth around a small rectangular mirror from Ginny's bag, and kept having to hush it when it complained -- when Harry snorted. "Here's one of her in Divination. I wonder if her professor was as useless as Trelawney?"

"Anyone would be hard pressed to be worse," Hermione grumbled into Colin's potion. "She's still predicting Harry's death every week."

"You haven't been paying enough attention in class, Hermione," Ron said with mock severity. "She's up to twice most weeks."

"I think she's running out of material, though," Harry added. "I've been supposed to be buried alive three times in a row now."

"One of those was yours, though, remember?" Ron reminded him. "Mind, she might remember...."

"Please," Ginny muttered, "tell me that class is optional."

"Yeah, it is. Why did we sign up for it again, Ron?"

"Well, the homework's easy," Ron said thoughtfully. "Kind of cathartic, really."

"You make it all up," Hermione said fiercely, "and she praises you to the skies even when none of it comes true -- and of course I'd be horrified if it did, but if that doesn't prove it's all nonsense I don't know what does!"

"We might want to hurry up." Ginny glanced at the outermost wall unhappily, though she was at the wrong angle to see much of anything through the window. "It's getting close to dinnertime, and he's probably freezing if he hasn't decided to come in yet."

Hermione looked abashed. "Right, I'm sorry. How many pictures do we have now? I lost count."

Colin carefully peeked back at the other pages of his book. "There's regular school one... an extra for academic honors -- and we're transferring the eighth from the album; I think Harry and Ron have found a few more though, and they're not quite all the way through."

"Here's another," Ron remarked, then blinked at the picture. "Although maybe we shouldn't use it...."

"What do you mean?" Ginny looked over at him.

"His father was a Muggle, right? This is NOT him she's kissing."

Harry coughed. "Right, we'll just leave this one, then."

Ron gave the blond Gryffindor in the picture a last incredulous look and turned the page. "Very odd -- oh, this one's better. Although the expression reminds me of Fred."

Harry sniggered a little at the thought. "That's all right, though. We're just lucky she did enough to get into as many pictures by somebody from the year ahead as she did -- though I'm starting to think it must have been a friend of hers, some of these had to have been planned...."

They found several more, though toward the very back of the book most of the pictures were of the photographer's own yearmates. Hermione did track down one large photo of Mary Echidne on a page that had stuck to its neighbor the first time through, where she was apparently in furious competition to complete an Arithmancy problem before the boy on the other side of the board. It was the same Gryffindor she'd been kissing in the one they'd omitted, but they decided this one was probably safe enough.

"I think that's it," Colin said finally, fanning the last page to make sure it was dry. "Who's taking it to him?"

"Ginny knows where he is, and, well, I'd like to go too." Harry looked around at them. "We can tell him how much you all helped, but I don't think we should descend on him in a mob."

"I suppose a small horde of Gryffindors might be a bit much, yes." Hermione carefully re-shelved the books. "That last picture reminded me, too -- I need to study."

"Oh, yes," Ron said, rolling his eyes and grinning. "It has been almost forty-five minutes since the last time, hasn't it."

Hermione swatted him with Magical Photocopying by Loki Twyce before they dispersed.

"Give me a few minutes?" Ginny asked. "I need to go borrow a cloak."

"You can borrow mine, if you like. I'll be all right without."

"I appreciate it... I'd feel guilty though. It's chilly out there."

"Well, we'd better hurry, then." Harry grinned. "Really, don't worry about it. I've got one of your mother's jumpers on."

Ginny blushed a little. "That's really nice of you, and we should -- he's been out there an awfully long time -- but I can get one fast." She sped up toward Gryffindor Tower, face still warm.

There were advantages to having assorted siblings at school with you. Ron's cloak was a bit too long and had to be held out of the grass, but it was definitely warm -- despite the Dementors she couldn't help imagining into the shadows that hid her and Harry from being caught out along their way.

She supposed if they were real the cloak wouldn't help.

Ginny thought at first that Tom had left the Quidditch field; even accounting for the shadows, she couldn't spot him at first. Then Harry pointed to a dark blob in the lower part of the stands, and they hurried down, squelching slightly. Tom was still huddled in Ginny's cloak, but had at least gotten out of the wet grass.

"Tom?" she paused beside him, then settled onto the next seat.

Tom smiled briefly at her, then glanced over at Harry as he slid into a seat on the other side of Ginny. "Brought reinforcements, eh? I think I'm... a bit better now."

"Good. Maybe we can get you to come in before you catch your death," Ginny said wryly. She raised her eyebrows at Harry.

"Actually... we brought you something." Harry fished the book out from under his cloak -- he hadn't wanted it getting wet if it started raining again -- and handed it to Tom.

Tom took the book cautiously, looking from it, to Harry, to Ginny, then back down to the book. "What -- ?" He flipped open the cover and perused the first few photographs. A girl, then a young woman, smiling and laughing, or working in class, her eyes as familliar to Tom as... well, as his own. "I-is this... what is this?"

"A photo album. Hermione and Colin found how to copy pictures, Colin brought the stuff and found a book from when she was here made by someone who was as camera-happy as he is, Harry got her name from Dumbledore, and he and Ron helped hunt through all the photos...."

"It's your mother, Tom," Harry added, swallowing. "As many pictures as we could find."

Tom blinked and looked back down at the book so he wouldn't have to meet their eyes -- of course, that was no help, with his mother's face beaming from every page. "I -- " He choked, and hugged the book hard into his chest, tears streaming down his face. "Thank you both. And Hermione and Colin and Ron too," he said after a long moment. "I don't know how to... you didn't have to do this."

"You're our friend," Ginny said quietly.

"Hagrid gave me an album with pictures of my parents," Harry added, "at the end of my first year. I know... well... how much it can mean."

Tom blinked, and wiped his face on the sleeve of his robe, and then looked up at them and smiled. "It means a lot. Thank you. I said that already. Um."

"You're welcome." Ginny took a moment to find one, then offered him a handkerchief. "Sorry, I should've thought of this sooner."

"I still haven't replaced mine from the chameleon," Tom said, and blew his nose. "Got dark all of a sudden, didn't it?"

"Not that suddenly. You've been out here for a while, even since I left -- I don't even know quite how long before that."

"I wasn't in much of a state to notice. Uh... I haven't missed dinner, have I?"

"Not yet," Harry told him. "We'd have swiped something for you if you had, though."

Tom smiled again, then stood up and offered Ginny her cloak back. "I suppose we'd better go in, then, or I might catch my death of cold."

"I'm surprised you haven't frozen already," Ginny told him a bit disapprovingly. "And keep it, you've been out here longer and I've got Ron's."

"All Slytherins are cold-blooded, you should know that." Tom tucked the book securely in one of the larger pockets in his robe. "Whoof. I think I'm going directly to bed after dinner."

"If you're cold-blooded," Harry pointed out, "you shouldn't be able to walk by now."

"Probably a good idea, though," Ginny added.

"Picky, picky."

They made several more steps through the soggy grass in silence -- except for a bit of squelching -- before a moonbeam sifted through the clouds. Ginny glanced at her companions and saw the silvery tear-stains on Tom's face, then thought about letting him go to the Slytherin table like that and quelled a shudder.

Granted, he could probably be vicious if they started in on him, but she wasn't sure he was up to it... and for that matter, in the event that he was, she wasn't completely sure they'd deserve the reaction they might get.

And he'd finally started shivering, just a bit. That might be good, though. Not shivering when you were cold was bad, wasn't it?

"We might want to stop somewhere to wash up before we go to dinner...."

Tom glanced over. "I -- I suppose that's probably a good idea. Um, where?"

"A bathroom, maybe?" she suggested drily. Quite a trick given that they were now being gently blanketed by a rather wispy fog.

"Maybe Hagrid's," Harry spoke up. "It's closer, and it's warm."

"Well, which bathroom, I meant," Tom began jokingly, but broke off at Harry's words. "Hagrid's? Do we have to?"

"It would be quicker, and you're shivering. And there's less chance of running into people," Harry replied seriously. "Except for Hagrid, of course."

"Well... that was sort of the, you know, reason for the question. I don't think he likes me very much."

Harry hesitated. "Well, he has to get used to the fact that you're you sometime. He has been letting you do the extra work for Care of Magical Creatures, after all, hasn't he?"

"It'll be okay," Ginny added. "Anyway, I think your trying to improve is winning him over, too."

"Yeah, but he looks at me like he's trying to figure me out, and... "Now that he thought about it, he was starting to sound rather silly. "He said he used to like me. I suppose... if it's closer."

"It is. And he'll be nice, you know," Harry told him. "He takes odd visits in stride. Even when somebody's vomiting green slugs."

Tom raised an eyebrow. "I'll... keep that in mind."

"Malfoy was being... Malfoy. Ron tried to curse him with a broken wand. It didn't work very well." Harry frowned. He was cold, and he hadn't been out nearly as long....

Ginny pounded on Hagrid's door when they reached the hut. There was promptly a thump and a bark as Fang jumped at the door.

Tom blinked, but managed not to flinch. Part of this was from having faced stranger creatures than a large dog during his extra credit sessions; part was from being too cold to flinch. He momentarily reflected that a wet grassy field wasn't the best place to go to brood; maybe the roof would work better next time.

"Back, Fang," came the familiar command. Apparently Fang was starting to get the idea, as there were no further sounds of thumping or scuffling, and no dog appeared in the doorway when the heavy door swung open. Just Hagrid, who blinked at them. "What are yeh all doin' out here? Yeh shouldn't be -- and I thought yeh'd be on yer way to dinner. Unless yeh want ter join me, that's fine of course, but yeh still oughtn't ter be out after dark with Black an' the Dementors out!"

Tom swayed involuntarily closer to the warmth pouring out of the open door, but let Harry or Ginny explain matters.

Fang made a whining noise from his corner. This may have been either a greeting or a complaint that he didn't want company for dinner.

"We're all together and being careful, and we'd like to get warm, at least, if that's all right," Ginny began.

"I should think yeh do! Come in, explain afterwards." Hagrid practically scooped them into the hut; Ginny nearly fell over but caught herself, laughing a little breathlessly. The heat was almost stinging after the chill outside.

The door closed with a decisive thud, and Hagrid, true to form, started making tea.

Tom lowered his hood, trying to resist the impulse to shake his wet hair out like a dog. It really was much warmer in here.

It was a bit disconcerting when something large and floppy landed over his head. A little investigation proved it to be a rough towel. "Yer all wet," Hagrid remarked somewhat disapprovingly, "and some of yeh are in the wrong cloaks. What's been goin' on?"

"Tom decided to sit out by the Quidditch field half the afternoon." Harry didn't elaborate much on why, at least to start with. "He'd... gotten some bad news."

~As long as I've got the towel on my head, Hagrid won't be looking at me,~ Tom thought, and began to dry his hair industriously.

Hagrid was, in fact, looking at him quite curiously, but as he couldn't see much and Tom had his eyes shut, this wasn't really accomplishing anything in particular.

"What kind of news is worth freezin' yourself over?" Hagrid's voice was gentler than Tom would have expected; it took him a moment to realize the question was addressed to him. By that time Hagrid had apparently given up on it and decided to focus on making them all drink hot tea.

The tea was somehow more warming than Tom had any idea tea could be, and it relaxed him enough to speak. "Well... the Aurors sent Professor Dumbledore some things to take care of... some old stuff of Voldemort's." He was too tired to notice Hagrid and Ginny flinch. "And there was a picture of my mother. Only it had to be destroyed because of Dark Magic. And I was... upset. Standing in the rain seemed like a good idea at the time."

Hagrid winced midsentence but restrained himself from coming out with "Don't say the name!" "I can see that," however, was still enough of a surprise to make Tom actually look up at him. Still that slightly puzzled expression, but.... "Yeh might want ter try somethin' warmer if anythin' else comes up, though."

"I was thinking the roof. When it's not winter, anyway."

"Maybe somewhere indoors?" Ginny suggested, sounding a bit exasperated. "Or... talk to somebody." She bit her tongue. Obviously the point was not to have to talk to somebody.

Tom patted Ginny's hand reassuringly. "I'm all right now, or mostly. You all... didn't have to do what you did."

"We wanted to," she and Harry said firmly, and at exactly the same time.

Tom buried himself in his teacup. ~I am not going to start again. What did I ever do to deserve them?~

"What did yeh do?"

Harry half-shrugged. "The same thing you did for me, pretty much. Found other pictures of his mum."

Tom put down his empty cup and dared a look up at Hagrid. "Is, um. Is there someplace I can wash my face?"

"Sure, looks like yeh need to." Hagrid found him a washcloth, too. It was pink, much like the umbrella.

"Thanks."

"Yer welcome." He had started shivering earlier, and then stopped, which reassured everyone considerably. He was really starting to get warm now. The hot water helped almost as much as the tea had.

Harry was trying to think whether there was any way to warn Hagrid of how young Tom had been when his mother died, in case Hagrid tried to ask sympathetic questions about what she had been like or something. Hagrid didn't, however, and it occurred to Harry eventually that if they'd been at Hogwarts together for not quite three years and using each other's first names, Hagrid might already know. Not necessarily, of course.

"Little Ginny's right, though, yeh know," the gamekeeper finally said. "Talkin' about it's likely to do more for yeh than standin' outside in the rain. Unless yer after catchin' cold or worse, that is."

"It did, in the event. Help more. And I didn't realize it'd be that cold." Tom wiggled his fingers, an odd expression on his face. "Pins and needles, lovely."

Ginny took the hand and wrapped it firmly around his teacup, which Hagrid refilled before draping an extra blanket over him. The damp cloaks had long since been quietly steaming beside the fireplace. It was getting a bit humid.

"Any time," she said softly. "You know that, right?"

"I suppose I do," Tom said, and smiled.

"Good."

After deciding that none of them seemed to be in further danger of hypothermia or frostbite (and making another pot of tea anyway), Hagrid eventually asked, "Would yeh let me see the pictures?"

"Um... all right," Tom said, bringing the book out from his inside pocket and handing it to Hagrid. "They really found a lot of pictures."

"In the library," Harry explained as Hagrid turned the pages carefully. "Her seventh-year picture, and Colin found an album a student had made with several more."

"She looks like a nice lady," Hagrid said at last. He turned another page and blinked at the group shot on the next one in surprise. "Guess she was there the same time as my dad."

Tom didn't quite know how to react to that. Somehow he hadn't thought of Hagrid as having parents.

Harry and Ginny, rather startled, leaned over the picture. "Which one?"

Hagrid pointed with a large finger.

Ginny sat back after a moment and filled her mouth with tea to avoid saying that she would have expected him to be taller.

Hagrid continued going through the book after a moment, then closed it respectfully and handed it back to Tom.

Tom accepted it and put it back in his pocket. ~I guess he is nicer than I thought he was,~ he mused, and tried a cautious smile.

Hagrid smiled back in somewhat the same fashion, although he still looked at Tom in a way reminiscent of how Hermione looked at a particularly difficult homework problem.

A little later, Harry said apologetically, "We probably should get going in time to eat. Thank you for letting us stop here, Hagrid."

"Um... yes, thank you. The tea was very good."

"Always glad ter see yeh," Hagrid replied warmly, shaking out the dried cloaks and feeling them for spots of damp. "Watch yeh don't dawdle on the way; it's only got colder."

Ginny's thanks included a hug, which Hagrid looked very surprised about but returned extremely gently.

Tom chuckled slightly. "This is the second time I'm making you two late for dinner. What will people think?"

"Probably that we're up to mischief," Harry replied cheerfully.

Then they braced themselves and made a rush out into the cold and back to the castle.

*****

Later that night, if any of Tom's roommates had been awake, they might have glimpsed a few stray flickers of light, and heard soft hissing escape from the drawn curtains of his four-poster.

"She lookss like she had lotss of fun," the boa said, eyeing one of the pictures featuring Tom's mother laughing.

"Well, there wouldn't have been very many pictures taken of her when she wasn't," Tom pointed out. But the snake was right -- even when she was quietly studying, head bent over parchment, Mary Echidne seemed nearly always to be smiling or laughing. "I like this one," he said, turning the page; the photographer had managed to catch her in the middle of hexing the Quidditch team's blackboard to run all the plays in reverse, and the photo showed her peeking over a couch, aiming her wand, and then sprinting away gleefully with the burly captain in half-outraged, half-amused pursuit.

"Heh. Trickssy. Lookss like you when she'ss grinning like that."

"Does she?" Tom grinned down at the picture, which winked conspiratorially up at him before hexing the board again. He'd spent some time with a mirror and the old picture, his first year, trying to find a resemblance, only to conclude he'd inherited most of his face from his father; having his mother's expressions, and maybe some of the character they revealed, seemed a much better legacy.

Tom closed the book gently. It was getting late, and he could always look at it again tomorrow. Or the next day. Any time he wanted, really, he could lift the covers and be able to see the person his mother had been; it was a priceless gift, and he didn't know how he could ever really thank them: Ginny and Harry, his first real friends, Hermione, Ron--even Colin, who he barely knew.

He wondered what his mother would have thought of her son being indebted to so many Gryffindors, and then smiled; she seemed to have had lots of friends, and not only in her own House, and would certainly have known what Ginny had been trying to tell him, that friendship was its own answer to questions of debt.

Unlike Tom, though, his mother had also found friends in Slytherin House, as he hadn't yet, and probably didn't have to hide her treasures as securely as Tom now did with her likenesses, slipping the small book into a hollow place he'd made in the headboard, then sealing it with a few charms they hadn't covered in class yet. Satisfied, he slid back under the covers.

Nearly the last thought that drifted through his mind as he drifted into sleep was that he didn't have to worry anymore that he didn't have a happy enough memory to conjure a Patronus.

The very last thought was that it didn't matter; either way, he wouldn't be standing alone.