Professor Albus Dumbledore arrives at an orphanage in London where he meets an eleven-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle. He never commented about his looks to me, but I imagine that he looked like his father. He commented to me that his powers were already very strong because he was showing signs of magic from an early age. In the memory I remember him commenting on how he can speak to snakes, how he can make people do things if they are mean to him and so on, he wanted to be told the truth, for people not to lie to him, something I could actually understand. The woman that looked after him seemed to hate him and he seemed to think that he was going to be sent to an asylum. I was 10 when I first saw this memory, Professor Dumbledore allowed me to see it before being sorted because I had been asking questions about my father. In my memory it went something like this:

PROFESSOR DUMBLEDORE: Hello Tom, I am Professor Dumbledore. (he holds out his hand)

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE: A Professor? Is that like a doctor?

PROFESSOR DUMBLEDORE: No, I’m a teacher. I’m here to offer you a place at my school. If you would like to come.

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE: No! You’re from the asylum!

PROFESSOR DUMBLEDORE: No, No, Tom but if you would rather not come, nobody will force you.

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE: I’m not mad!

PROFESSOR DUMBLEDORE: I know that. Hogwarts is not a school for mad people it is for magic.

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE: Magic?

PROFESSOR DUMBLEDORE: That’s right.

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE: It’s magic, what I can do?

PROFESSOR DUMBLEDORE: What can you do?

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE: I 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. I knew I was different; I knew I was special.

PROFESSOR DUMBLEDORE: You were right.

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE: Are you a wizard too?

PROFESSOR DUMBLEDORE: Yes, I am.

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE: Prove it.

Even when writing this there are things that jump out at me that perhaps didn’t when I saw it when I was younger. But I am now an adult with children of my own. I see and hear an excitable child needing to get out the pressures that have been inside him for a very long time, and a calm, perhaps manipulative professor at times anxious to see what this boy would become. He knew he was related to the Gaunts, knew that he was an heir of Slytherin. His choice of words was careful, precise and delicate. This young boy was very independent and could go to Diagon Alley on his own a feat Harry Potter didn’t ever manage.