“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!”