Post by Tom Scott on Jul 15, 2010 19:22:33 GMT 1
((The offer to a shorter version is still open ))
First Name: Tom
Last Name: Scott
Heritage: Muggleborn (most likely)
Birth date: 6th of March, 1962
Age: 12
Place of Birth: Canterbury
Current Location/Home: Canterbury
General Appearance: Tom is slightly smaller than most boys of his age. His face is round and he’s a bit chubby. He’s got a slight tan and usually has a lot of colour in his face. His eyes are dark blue and framed with dark winkers. His hair is dark brown to black and wavy, but usually rather short cut. When he’s at Hogwarts though, he forgets to keep it short and it grows and becomes messy, until he returns home and his mother cuts it real short again. Tom’s body is healthy and he’s in good shape, though of course he doesn’t have any apparent muscle tissue as he is only a child.
Tom isn’t very aware of his looks and doesn’t care much about fashion of anything like that. Concerning clothes he is often ten years behind. This is partly because all the clothes Tom possesses (except for his uniform) come from charity centres and are second-hand and old. He usually wears his short trousers, though he has one long pair from his uniform, which he sometimes wears as normal trousers. Other than that he possesses a few buttoned down shirts which are usually half in and half out of his pants because he forgets to put them in properly, and a red and white blocked sweater which he wears almost the entire winter. These are the clothes he wears when he’s not wearing his uniform, that is, whenever he has the chance, because he finds his own clothes more comfortable than his uniform. His uniform used to be slightly too big, but he’s grown into the size pretty well.
Tom is the sort of boy who will walk around in the same clothes for weeks, until someone reminds him to put on something clean. He often forgets to wash himself or comb his hair. These things are just not very relevant to him. Therefore, Tom can look a bit dishevelled and some people rather stay away from him.
Eye Colour: Blue
Hair Colour: Very dark brown/black
Parents: Eloisa M. Scott, Ivan Richards
Siblings: None
Other Family: None alive or whom there’s contact with
Personal History:
Background
Tom was born under what could be called unfortunate circumstances. His mother, Eloisa Scott, had no one left, and had a lot of resentment toward a world that had treated her bad from her point of view. Perhaps it could be stated that she had certain psychological problems, but she was never tested or diagnosed for anything. She held the world to be unsafe and unreliable, and she had great difficulties trusting people. She always expected the worst scenarios to happen and building up a healthy relationship was hard for her – nearly impossible – due to the lack of trust and also emotional commitment. Also, she was unpredictable. From one moment to the other, she could change from calm, to being angry and almost aggressive, to anxious, to claiming, to rejecting etc.
Eloisa was very young when she got pregnant, and Tom’s father, Ivan Richards, whom she was having an unsteady relationship with at that time, left her when he found out she was pregnant and never let her or his yet unborn son hear anything of him again. This confirmed Eloisa’s already existing mistrusting attitude toward the world, and men were from that point onward ‘uncaring, selfish and traitorous’.
Tom’s mother was desperate at this point in her life. She had no steady place of her own, no one to turn to, and was carrying an unwished-for child. She was in fact planning an illegal abortion, thinking she had no obligations toward this ‘parasite of a child’ and that she’d be better off without it, when she, visiting the grave of her parents and grandparents, felt the first kick of the unborn life. It was then and there that she realised that she did have an obligation. She could make things better for her child than they had been for her. As often with her, there was a really fast change in her thinking. She identified the still unborn child, with herself – it would be a girl – and herself with her mother. She could be the mother her own mother hadn’t been able to be. Her unborn child would live her life over, but perfect. It was not her only motive. Her child would keep her from loneliness; would stand by her side against the hostile world. The idea of a child, gave Eloisa a reason to live again. It became the one thing she desperately clung onto, because it was the only thing that gave meaning to her life. And once the idea was planted, she would lose all sense of meaning and identity if she would lose the child in any way. Hence the desperate clinging.
Now having a child coming, and also more willing to go on, it was easier for her to get financial aid. Eloisa managed to rent a small apartment in Canterbury, rejecting friendly gestures of neighbours, and in that way isolating herself and her unborn, but already completely planned out child from the evil outside world. With her secondary school not even finished, a pregnancy, a demeanour that made her look slightly crazy, and returning problems with colleagues, it was hard for her to find and keep a job, and she only worked shortly in a factory, before she lost her job just before a planned maternity leave and became dependant of social security again.
When Tom was born, it was a shock to Eloisa to find out her child was a boy, instead of the perfectly planned out girl, to represent herself. Also, she recognised Benjamin in him. She blamed Tom. Not only was he an intruder in her life, but he wouldn’t be who she had wanted him to be either. As if he was out to make her feel miserable, just like his father.
However, she couldn’t get rid of her son anymore now, and though the grudge would always remain, she soon found a new part to play for this child. No matter how much this child looked like his father, he wouldn’t be anything like him, or like any man. Tom would be the perfect man, not like all the others. He would make up for what the rest of the world did wrong – pay her back for his father and all men. He would protect her and never leave her. He would be everything she had wanted both his father and her own parents and grandparents to be. In this way, the child was still the project of her life, and she would be his. Together they would stand against the bad outside world. As long as they were together, everything was alright.
An ambiguity in her feelings toward the child would always remain however, and she would express it in her unpredictable behaviour as well as in very subtle messages and signs. On one hand there was the idealised version of Tom, whom she clung on to. On the other hand there was the idea of the intruder who represented all evil in the world.
Earliest years
Tom grew up in an unsafe and unstable situation. Even as a baby his mother’s love was never guaranteed. One moment, Eloisa would be taking him anywhere, talking to him sweetly, and he would be the apple of her eye, but the next moment, she would be cold and distant, and throughout everything the ambiguity of her feelings were picked up by the infant. Though of course these are things he cannot remember and he never picked up his mother’s thoughts and feelings consciously, they deeply affected him, probably all the more exactly because it was unconscious. Though not as strong as in his mother’s case, the world was unreliable to him, like his mother had been unreliable.
Eloisa had thought of how great it would be to have a child, company, and someone to love and receive love from. But she hadn’t been prepared for the fact that babies cry a lot, need clean diapers all the time, cost more money than she had, etc. As stated, she was very young and was all alone. She had no one to teach her how to deal with it, and no one to fall back on. She was already depressed and when the child just wouldn’t stop crying, and she didn’t know what to do, she got desperate. It was at those moments that she would be harsh to the baby, by leaving the apartment for a long time, and thereby the child, or yelling at him and at some moments, she considered whether it wouldn’t be better if they were just both dead. But though she was cold to him, the next moment, as said, she would cling to him, and he would be the project of her life.
Eloisa was supposed to find a job, a while after Tom’s birth, or she would no longer get the financial support she needed. However, until now, she has had periods in which she worked in factories, and periods in which she was unemployed. She was never able to keep her job for more than a few months. She would hate the work, partly because the interaction with her colleagues was always bad, and because she often felt sick. She claimed that bringing Tom into the world had severely damaged her health, and she was also often depressed. If she would stop working out of herself however, she wouldn’t get help. And so she would work and be sick a lot, until she was fired, then they would get help, but Eloisa was supposed to find a new job. She often pushed this off however, simply not having the energy, but there would always be the threat that this would be discovered and there would be no money at all. Therefore Eloisa kept working in factories, if she could get a job again, and have periods on unemployment and she and Tom never had much to spend and were partially dependant on charity.
Eloisa and Tom, in those early years, seemed one person. By the way Eloisa was clinging onto and dependent of her child, and Tom of course was that of his parent, they were almost experiencing themselves as one and the same thing. Them as one organism, against an unreliable world. Eloisa’s wishes were Tom’s wishes, and he would live for them. The clinginess was labelled ‘love’ and ‘protectiveness’, so that even in later years, Tom would never be able to cut the symbiotic bond. After all, all his mother had ever done was love and protect him. He shouldn’t be ungrateful. And since his identity and existence was so intertwined with his mother’s (she was also really the only person he had contact with), it wouldn’t be clear anymore who he would be, if he would go against the relationship.
Even from the moment Tom was very young, his mother expected him to play the role of a husband and father. She would talk to him as a child, but the topics were adult – what they would do for the day, the news, the world, their financial problems, her work, how her colleagues treated her unfairly - and she expected a mature and very concerned reaction. When she was sad, she’d expect Tom to comfort her. When she needed to talk, she talked to Tom. And the child wanted and would indeed give to his mother what he could, not only in ways that would be obvious to any outsider, but also in far more hidden ways. The fact that when he was two or three, he would cause trouble when he had to go to sleep, so that his mother would have to keep him with her all night, was perceived as ‘difficult behaviour’ by Eloisa, and it wasn’t unusual that she would get angry with him and punish him for it, hit him if she didn’t know what to do. But it would in fact keep her from the painful loneliness and meaninglessness, she so often experienced. In this way, Tom took care of his mother in many ways, which were neither seen nor praised, and of which he often wasn’t even conscious. Also for the obvious ways, Eloisa would usually not praise him, or think of it as special. After all, he should be grateful he was alive. And wasn’t she only giving him a lot of attention? Wasn’t she working incredibly hard, sacrificing her health to keep them from the streets? It was only logical that he would give something back after all she did for him. Tom’s giving was always taken for granted. He should contribute something too.
Tom was afraid of his mother as much as he loved her. She could yell at him all of a sudden that he was ungrateful and that she had never wanted him and that he was lucky to be born. She would suddenly blame him for all that was wrong, or she would threaten to put him on the street, or leave him behind. From when he was a small boy, he knew that any moment, he could do something wrong and his mother could explode. She could punish him harshly when she was angry. But though she would sometimes hurt him and he could be scared of her, he did nothing against it and passively accepted, and blamed it to himself. He did sometimes misbehave on purpose, after all, and he knew he was a burden to her. Also, he knew how difficult life was to her, and how much she had suffered and that she was very sad. And the next moment Eloisa would change again and he was all she lived for and the one she loved most, and without him, she would be nowhere. She would take him out for strolls, sing songs to him, cook him his favourite food on special days etc. He could not feel any bad things toward her because of this and he couldn’t blame her. Also, she needed him. Who would take care of her if he wouldn’t love her? And who would take care of him? Without her, he would be no one. And though Tom did play a mature role, Eloisa did do a lot for him, and was acting over-concerned. With all she did for him, he should give something back.
More binding however, were the more subtle, ambiguous messages that Eloisa could express in any way – a frown, silence, words that could be understood differently. Tom picked them up subconsciously, and on that level, he sensed all too well that his mother’s feelings toward him ambiguous and that she couldn’t really love him as much as she always said she did – that it was an act, and she hated him as much as she loved him. He would never show her that he knew it however, and he accepted whatever love he could get, indeed accepting the role of ungrateful, sacrificed-for child and he loved her and cared for her to make up for everything he and his father had done wrong to her. The contract of her fake love was always better than the risk of losing the love altogether. Just like the fusion she needed, and he too desired, was better than not being at all.
It should be emphasised that Tom never considered his mother bad and truly did love her. Many of these processes happened on a deep level, and neither of them were very aware of it. When Eloisa would be angry, it was because the world had treated her so bad, and Tom was only making it harder for her, or so he perceived it. The rest was covered under the label of ‘love’. Eloisa only showed how much she loved her child by being so clingy. And since the both of them had no one else, they could create a realm inside their home with rules and habits that were normal to them, even though it might be perceived weird or wrong to outsiders. Especially to Tom, it was the world as he knew it.
His father, on the other hand, really was a ‘bad guy’. From the moment he was born, Eloisa told Tom what miserable a man his father was. Tom indeed was brought up to see his father as a bad guy. He never really knew anything about the man, but he did not ‘want’ to know anything about him either. He was evil and Tom hated him. However, in a sense, this was very damaging. No matter how much Tom tried to be loyal to his mother, his father was a part of him. Without the man, he wouldn’t have existed, and in a sense, therefore, Tom was forced to betray a part of his existence. He hated, and his mother blamed, the cause of his existence, and a man whose genes Tom carried, no matter what. It was like there was a part in him that was bad and ugly and he was ashamed of it. This feeling was increased by Eloisa’s statements on how men were traitorous and bad. He was a man after all. Later, it would make him try and search for solutions to that, to somehow reconcile himself with his inherent evil. For now, however, he was too young to betray the silent contract with his mother.
Primary School
When he was four, Tom first went to school. He didn’t like it and he was often sick. Eloisa would easily keep him home. She would be annoyed about all the care she had to take of him, when he was sick and openly told him how much she had to do for him, while she had other things to do as well. But in fact, when Tom was sick, she didn’t have to be all alone at home at times she had no job, which was, though she didn’t realise it so clearly, why she always believed it and kept Tom home when he said he was sick. Tom being ill wasn’t faked. He did really feel ill and his body would really show it. He did not want to be sick, because he did not want to trouble his mother so much. He was feeling so guilty toward her already. However, on a deeper level, he did want to be sick, because him going to school and being away from his mother – living an own life – was betrayal toward her.
Growing up with only his mother around, Tom lacked social skills. He first didn’t play with other kids at all, and would usually just sit and watch, not understanding the use of many games, or play on his own. Later, if some kids accepted him, he would play along, but he would always keep some distance and never went to play at other kids’ houses or any of that, and he wasn’t able to adjust to the other children. He had to have the games his way, and when they’d share toys, he wanted to have more toys than the other kids, for example. Most kids would therefore leave him alone.
All through his primary school years, Eloisa would keep her double attitude and behaviour toward Tom. She would do good things for him, but then the next moment, she’d say bad things or punish him harshly again. Often, her behaviour was also double to Tom in the act itself, like when she had managed to buy him a birthday present, and she told him that at the orphanage, they had never celebrated birthdays like that and how hard it had been to save money for this. Though Tom was glad with the present – they usually just didn’t have money for anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary – those things spoiled it for a great deal. He would feel guilty instead. He didn’t know what to expect with her either. Once, when he was six, she had all off a sudden taken him to buy a rabbit. They actually couldn’t afford one, and it would give a lot of trouble in their apartment, but they bought it anyway. They took care of it for a few weeks, and then, when Tom loved his pet, Eloisa suddenly ordered him to kill it. When he couldn’t, even after his mother getting angry, Eloisa killed it and turning back to Tom she told him to never get attached to anything. They ate the creature, though Tom could only do it on Eloisa’s command. The boy was very upset and it was hard for him to accept that his mother had done such a thing, but ‘he didn’t like rabbits anyway’.
At times it was really a matter of struggling to get all their needs. When they were doing really bad, social security allowed Eloisa to get extra money for their basic needs, but she was often worried about this and shared these worries with Tom. Tom tried to comfort her, cooking dinner that night so she could rest, telling her everything would be alright etc. But it worried him too. In his child’s eyes it was even worse. He was afraid that they would one day starve. He didn’t realise that the state wouldn’t let a mother and a child die of starvation or anything like that. Partly because of this, food and collecting became an obsession. When he would get something nice to eat somewhere, he would save it and hide it, for later on (in the end he would either eat it or forget it), or give it to his mother, to help her, and when he had the chance to eat as much as he wanted, he would eat until he burst, just to be sure he hadn’t wasted any opportunity. Collecting things had been something he did before that, but now it became worse. Tom hardly had toys or any possessions really, but he would collect junk, just in case it would get in handy, and always wanted to have more than others. When his mother would find this junk, she would usually throw away everything that wasn’t valuable, but Tom would continue gathering ‘riches’.
Being socially awkward and distant, Tom soon became the outsider and, later on, the one who other kids would pick on. He tried to hide it, not wishing to burden his mother and ashamed of being the weak boy, but when Eloisa did find out, she would come to school often to complain and protect him, which practically only made it worse, for now he was a ‘mama’s boy’. Tom never really fought back and just took it passively, but when the other kids started saying bad things about his mother, he did become aggressive and started having fights. ‘No one would say a bad word about his mother!’
He was only a boy of six at the time, but nonetheless the school foresaw problems. And fighting was fighting. And so Eloisa was contacted once again. She was of course angry at Tom, for causing so much trouble for her again, but toward the school she held that Tom was misunderstood and that the other children were mean to her son and she blamed the school for not dealing with it effectively. Finally it was decided that Tom would be put in another class, so that he had a new chance to make contact with his classmates. Also Eloisa was advised to put Tom on a sport, so that he could deal with ‘his aggressive tendencies’.
Even though this meant he would be home less and there was hardly money for it, Eloisa did sign Tom up for soccer. She showed him her anger though. Because he was such an aggressive boy, she now had to pay contribution for a useless activity like sport. Though Tom had wanted to sport for a while – other boys did that too – he felt guilty and said he didn’t need to go on one. Eloisa only got angrier at that however and told him that he was going to fix his problem, so that he would not embarrass her anymore.
And so Tom indeed started playing soccer. Pretty soon, it turned out that he had a talent for it, and the coach often praised him. Though initially Tom hadn’t liked the fact that he was forced to go on a sport, when his mother didn’t seem happy about it, he soon started liking it a lot, even if it was just for the praise he received. This was after all something new to him. Eloisa hardly ever praised him, and he performed bad at school and only got told off there. To have the coach be so proud of him was a great push for Tom to train harder, even though the praise made him feel a little threatened too. The fact that Tom was good at sports, made some of his new classmates admire him, and Tom wasn’t picked on anymore, even though he would always keep distance.
As I just said, Tom never performed very well in school. His grades were very low, and this would remain throughout his whole primary school time. Especially reading and writing was a problem to him. His mother would get angry over it. She wanted Tom to be the best of the class. The boy’s difficulties with learning would remain however. Tom often got punished at school for making very obvious mistakes and handing things in, written in a very messy handwriting, or for being apparently too lazy to memorize things. However, it didn’t make his work any better. What it did cause was for Tom to hate school even more. Now it was not only a betrayal toward his mother, but also a place where it became obvious that he was stupid and he was hit for it. It also encouraged his school sickness. When Eloisa found out her son was physically punished for his performance however, she came to school again and stood up for Tom, claiming again that her boy was misunderstood, and that they shouldn’t even dare to touch her child again. Eloisa didn’t get him to another school though, and didn’t get him extra tutoring or anything like that. There wouldn’t have been money for that anyway.
When Tom had started going to school, he had noticed that other children did have a father, and he had seen that their fathers were not evil. Slowly his own father had become an issue again. He wasn’t allowed to acknowledge the man, and his father was bad. But he was a part of Tom, like a demon inside of him he should fear and be ashamed of. However, by now Tom secretly started making up myths about the person of his father, to deal with this bad part of him, and because he longed for a father. He fantasised that his father had actually been a good man, but had left for some noble cause. Or that he had left to return one day. Or that he had wanted to stay but couldn’t. In all these myths, the core idea was that his father was not really evil, but that he had loved Tom and his mother and that he would return one day. And in his imagination his father always looked like his coach.
His coach was a substitute for a father to Tom, and it was the reason he got more and more into sports. Tom loved the praise he received and all the time he tried to catch his coach’s attention, by trying to learn new tactics, which would earn him praise again. Tom adored the man and sometimes he dreamed that his coach was actually his father, who had secretly come to Canterbury to watch over his son and Tom eagerly waited for the day his coach would tell. He tried to get alone with the man as often as possible, hoping to give him a chance, so he would at last tell. The coach on his side, probably suspected that not everything was alright in Tom’s home. That, combined with the fact that Tom was a bit timid on the team at first, asked for a lot of praise and attention and hung around him so much, made him take the boy under his wing a bit, praising him, making sure his still underdeveloped social skills didn’t get him into trouble with the other boys on the team, and trying to get a story about his home life out of him, though he failed in the latter. Tom was too protective of his mother. Nevertheless his coach became a very important person in the boy’s life, and making the man proud became one of Tom’s major goals.
Even though, when he grew older, Tom realised that the particular idea of his coach being his father was madness, he remained making up myths around the person of his father. He never told his mother though, and he always felt guilty when he thought of his father. It was betrayal toward his mother. He should pick her side; after all she had done for him. But what if his father hadn’t meant to cause her so much pain? He really did want to believe that.
Tom sported whenever he could, and in the times his mother was in yelling-mode, he could flee there. It gave him an excuse to stay away, and he enjoyed spending time around the coach he admired so much and outside of trainings, he just enjoyed doing something he was good at for once. Sports gave Tom a bit of self-esteem. Where the guilt toward his mother, and the frustrations at school could make him feel worthless, sports gave him the hope that there were things he was good at. The praise he received stimulated this even more. It also helped him identify himself with something, being a person outside of the ‘bad man’ he was in his relationship with his mother. It had also gotten him out of his socially isolated position. Though it happened slowly, Tom developed more social skills over the years, and though he’d still rather keep people at a distance, he at least became more conscious of what he could expect in social situations. Outside of sports, he remained a rather shy and timid boy, but he did learn what it was like to have social interaction.
Being picked on earlier, which was done by other boys, and always having been stigmatised by his mother for being a male, ‘manhood’ was an important theme in Tom’s life. Ashamed to be a man because of his father’s sins and feeling like he was less than other men, because other boys picked on him, Tom had started thinking and perhaps also hoping, that he was not a man, that perhaps he was a girl, or something in between. Soccer helped him to change that view a bit. First of all, he identified sports with males, and him playing a sport made him more masculine therefore. Then there was the contact with the boys on his team, which, though he was still a bit distant, made him feel like he was a part of ‘the guys’. Third, there was the example of his coach, whom Tom tried to act like, so that he felt like he knew how to act ‘like a man’.
Getting a little self-esteem, having contact outside of the home, experiences, a hobby, etc, influenced the way Tom acted at home. He saw himself more as an own person and now and then he disobeyed his mother, not simply because he was a child and was testing limits, but because he really disagreed with her. Tom himself experienced this individuation as something scary and wrong however, and would often feel guilty. He would respond to that by staying at home some more, and trying to show his mother that he loved her and would never leave her. To Eloisa, Tom’s every step away from her was a big threat, for she never wanted to experience the pain of separation again. To avoid it, when Tom would not obey, she would punish him harshly, hoping to stop the process. Also, if he would stay away a lot Eloisa would make him feel guilty. She would tell him that he could stay away, and that she would be fine on her own. Sarcastically, she would say that of course everything was about Tom, and that all her concern was to be taken for granted. ‘But she didn’t blame him. She was used to being rejected. And this was just how men were. Men only cared about themselves in the end.’ Or sometimes she would just ignore him and shrug at every attempt of Tom to make it up to her and pretend it was nothing. It made him lessen his time for sports a bit. He was already feeling guilty for his secret thoughts about his father and he definitely did not want to lose his mother’s love. Indeed when he was home more often it was rewarded with Eloisa paying attention to him. Again, she started telling him how much she loved him and how he was all she had. In this way, through all the years of primary school, Tom had to balance between dedication to his hobby and the coach, and his loyalty toward his mother.
In Tom’s last year of primary school his mother had some problems with the social security, which meant a part of her income was cancelled. This forced Tom to stop playing soccer on the team. He was sad about it, but there was no choice. At that time, instead, he tried to be home more often to support his mother.
Hogwarts
Tom had never known he was a wizard until he was eleven. His mother was a muggle, and his father was most likely one too. Little unexplainable things had been marked as coincidence or had been ignored and soon been forgotten again. Tom would go to a normal secondary school. Eloisa had already given up her hopes of Tom being the best of his class and instead claimed him to be very misunderstood. He would just go to school and after that get a low-income job, because society didn’t understand him, just like it had never understood her. Society was unfair toward people like them.
At the end of Tom’s primary school however, a man from the ministry of magic came to the Scotts’ apartment to inform Eloisa and her son of the fact that Tom was a wizard and accepted at Hogwarts. To people who had never believed in magic, this of course came over as plainly ridiculous and Eloisa, already very mistrusting, thought that this was some trick to steal her son away. The idea that the Child Protection Services would take her son away from her had always been an obsession for her, and she had often told Tom about how people could take him away from her and all the horrible things that could happen to him then, just to make sure that he would not tell bad things about his home life. Now she was afraid that Child Protection, or perhaps another organisation, was out to take her son from her. The man from the ministry showed magic to proof that this was no trick and that his story was true, but was nevertheless thrown out with the warning to not come back. A frightened or angry reaction from muggles however was a not very uncommon thing and the man said he would come back later and they could think it over.
Eloisa then questioned Tom, blaming him of doing things behind her back and she wanted to know exactly how much he knew of the man. The boy however was just as surprised as his mother, and just as scared of being separated from her by going to some school far away. After this Eloisa started constantly saying he’d leave her to go to that school (as if he could, by his own decision), because he didn’t care about her. Tom tried to tell his mother that he would never leave her. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help thinking of this school. He felt that this was the reason he had never fitted in and he wondered about magic and all of that. The thought that he was a very special person fascinated him. ‘He had been chosen for something very rare and important. Other kids just went to normal, mediocre schools. But he was meant for a better school.’ And somewhere he desired to betray his mother; to be that bad man he knew he was. Nevertheless his mother had first place, and he felt guilty for his thoughts and therefore tried to push them away.
But in the end, Eloisa changed her mind, before any possible conflict could appear. She had always known she was special, just like Tom. This was why they had never fitted in. Now Tom could develop his talent. And it was only logical he’d neglect her wishes for that. Men were always traitors in the end. And so Tom would go to Hogwarts so he could be selfish there. (What also helped was the fact that there was a fund for children who couldn’t afford their school necessities, and Tom would live at school, meaning it would save money, but that was only mentioned as a small argument). This way of thinking from his mother in fact made the boy more reluctant to go to the school and he was conflicted and confused and didn’t know how to respond and what the woman really wanted. And so he responded by simply not responding and passively going to Hogwarts indeed.
The closer it came, the less happy the boy was about it. His mother started blaming him, not only openly, but also by wondering who would take care of her if she would become sick again and mentioning Tom’s father more often. Tom, from his side, did not only feel more and more guilty, but was also scared of going to a strange school (even though he had received much information, had already bought his stuff etc.) far away. He had never been away from his mother for even one night. He now told his mother that he didn’t have to go, but she said plans had been made already.
At Hogwarts a new world opened to him. First of all, there was enough food to stuff himself full every meal. Slowly he started becoming less obsessive about food, though he definitely did become chubbier throughout his first year. Classes were all new to him. There were many things he simply didn’t know about, and he learnt more about the war going on. Of course the man from the Ministry had mentioned You-Know-Who, but he had made it seem not so bad, representing the Ministry, which should tackle this problem after all. This war hardly scared Tom, probably because he didn’t realise the seriousness of the situation, and more importantly because he had more on his mind. Tom was terribly homesick and in those first months he spent many nights hiding under his blanket and crying, because he missed his mother. He would write her short letters and notes almost every day to make up for him being gone, but now that he was at Hogwarts he knew how much of a bad decision this had been, and a few times he considered to run away from school and go home, by foot if necessary (topography had never been his strongest point). He never did though, and in the end, though he still wanted to go home, he got used to being away from his mother and looking forward to the break, his first chance to return.
It turned out that also here, Tom didn’t perform well in class. He had hoped that here he would turn out to be talented after all, but he was soon disappointed in that. Concerning essays and reading, he kept having his difficulties and not every professor was pleased with Tom’s messy handwriting and terrible spelling. The boy did soon notice however that corporal punishment was apparently not used in Hogwarts and to a boy who had not only learnt to hate, but also to be afraid of school, this was a great relief. With his wand, Tom didn’t perform all too miserable, but he wasn’t very good at it either. His hate for school also stood in the way for him to enjoy his classes and with his lack of motivation – all the more because he was feeling guilty toward his mother and actually didn’t want to be here – he didn’t try very hard to pay attention either, which made him bad at subjects like Astronomy and Potions.
The only exception was Flying. Tom had realised that there was no soccer in the wizarding world, and this had been a great disappointment to him. But when he realised that there was a wizard sport, he had already looked forward to at least learn about that. Turning out to be good at flying, and this coming closest to sports, Tom enjoyed those classes and outside of class, though he did not have an own broom, he flew on the school brooms whenever there was one available. Flying gave him a new sort of freedom. It helped him emptying his mind from the frustrating classes. When it was just him and his broom, he felt closest to home and to his mother, whom he still missed terribly. He also learned much about Quidditch and started to like the sport. He didn’t try out for the team though, not only because he was too late but also because he was sure he could never be good enough to play on the house team and was rather intimidated by the older students who were on it.
Tom’s social skills were still underdeveloped compared to other children of his age. He usually didn’t talk to others, unless they talked to him, and he kept his distance, not really wanting to have to do much with people who had taken him away from his mother. Also, he wouldn’t take care of himself that well (clean clothes, washing himself, combing his hair) and would come over as rather asocial, and so other students would stay away from him usually. He did know his classmates by the end of the year and sometimes talked to them, but he didn’t have any real friends. He didn’t miss them though. Tom was used to social isolation. Considering his home situation, one could almost say it was a command to isolate himself. That was always how his mother had solved things too after all.
During the breaks, Tom would go back to Canterbury of course. He had feared that maybe his mother would be rejecting after he had left, and this fear was well-founded, because indeed Eloisa acted rather uncaring about Tom’s return. Later on in the breaks, she would sometimes be different, but Tom felt guilty and sad anyway. And he always dreaded going back to school and in the first few days after a return he felt very miserable. What if his mother would repudiate him?
Tom never told his mother much about the magical world. In their home, they simply didn’t ask each other many questions, and so Eloisa didn’t ask Tom much about school, and Tom didn’t tell her too much either, knowing that his school and his mother didn’t go together anyway. He didn’t want to give his mother the idea that he enjoyed the magical world, or she could think he would leave her. Also, didn’t tell her about the war, as it was not a topic very relevant to him. The boy himself didn’t even quite get the magical world yet.
Tom finished his first year with low grades, except for flying. During the End of Year feast he tried to stuff as much conservable food in his pockets as he could, so that he could take it home. It would be a waste not to do so after all. Tom was very glad to be able to return home, even though he was a little afraid of how his mother would act.
Personality:
Self-centred: Tom is quite self-centred. This doesn’t mean that he cares about no one. Considering how much he looks after his mother (even though he feels like he doesn’t and feels he’s selfish), it wouldn’t be fair to state this. It is true that he doesn’t care much for others when it is not his mother, but self-centred should rather be interpreted as only looking from his own perspective. Tom’s social skills are still underdeveloped and this is a part of it. He has a hard time understanding the other person’s position and always wants things his way, because to him, that is the only way of seeing things. This self-centeredness is for example noticeable in the fact that Tom usually doesn’t ask other people questions. When someone asks him how his holiday was, he will answer shortly, but he will not return the question. In that way, he is indeed the centre of his world and others are only relevant to him when they relate to his world.
Self-esteem: This doesn’t lead him to be arrogant though. Being blamed by his mother all the time and the only thing he really learned in school being that ‘he’s stupid’, Tom has quite a low self-esteem. Sports and his coach’s praise and support helped him to build it up a bit, but Tom is still insecure about his capabilities. When it comes to performance, he is often convinced that he will do bad. Sports is his great exception. He knows he’s good at it, which is one of the reasons he loves it so much, but even there he has his limits of course.
School: In school, his self-esteem is lowest. Tom performs bad in class, especially on theoretical parts or when he has a lot of reading and writing to do, and though he has never experienced a teacher hurting a student at Hogwarts, he is still somewhat afraid. At the same time, he’s not trying very hard either. Tom is not very motivated and sometimes plainly lazy when it comes to school. He will zone out in class and he’s not trying very hard on his homework either. So not only the form (spelling etc.) of his essays are bad, but also the content. Knowing he’s ‘stupid’, he doesn’t care much either.
Teachers: He is still afraid of teachers however. Though sometimes in social situations Tom doesn’t know what is expected of him, he knows perfectly how to talk politely to a teacher and he will always try it just a little bit more. He doesn’t like them though.
Special: Tom may have a low self-esteem, but he does like to think himself a very special person. He sometimes thinks that he was chosen for some special goal and that one day he’ll be a very important and admired person. Actually the world just misunderstands him, he sometimes thinks, and he is very talented.
Distance: Tom is a bit of a loner. The one big key to getting him to interact from out of himself is sports. In other situations, he rather keeps people at a distance. He doesn’t hate them or anything. In fact, he doesn’t think much of them at all. He’s just not really interested in other people and he rather avoids making all too much contact. As said, isolation is almost an order, though never spoken out in that way.
Mistrust: It wouldn’t be fair to say that Tom is extremely mistrusting. He doesn’t think there’s an enemy around every corner and he doesn’t think people are always out to hurt him. However, he is often very careful when it comes to new situations and contact with other people. He is prepared for people perhaps having bad motives and he does have a tendency to expect the worst of new situations. This is why he is usually careful to try new things. This can concern small things like which flavour of ice-cream to choose, but also bigger things like joining a group. This perhaps pessimistic approach to life is not an all-dominating trait, that controls his every decisions. Tom does sometimes embark on something new. Rather, it is a tendency.
Verbal skills: Tom doesn’t come from the most educated milieu and this is reflected in, for example, his verbal skills. With only his mother around in the first years, Tom didn’t develop a very broad vocabulary. In school and on the soccer team, he learnt more of course, but still he is not very good at expressing himself verbally and sometimes still doesn’t know what certain words mean. This is not only a difficulty in school, but also outside of it, when he tries to explain what he means. It doesn’t mean Tom is not able to talk properly. He is perfectly able to communicate, but his vocabulary is perhaps smaller than that of his peers, and he has difficulties formulating sentences in a way that it will convince the other, or to put a story in a good telling-order, and when it comes to talking about what’s going on inside of him, he often lacks the verbal skills and vocabulary to explain.
Inner world: Perhaps partly because he is unable to give words to it, or perhaps influencing his disability to find words for it, is the fact that Tom is often not very well aware of what’s going on inside of him. Usually he’s not very sure of what he’s feeling and what he wants. The latter is reflected in the fact that Tom doesn’t have much ‘favourites’. Though he tends to pick the things he’s tried before, when this is not relevant, Tom usually doesn’t care about what colour of shirt to pick, what animal he likes best, whether he prefers Potions or Arithmancy. He does not care very much about these things and is usually rather passive when it comes to decision making.
Eloisa: Even though she sometimes treats him harshly and blames him for many things, Tom’s mother is his priority number one. Tom tends to think of himself as a bad person. When she treats him harshly, he had deserved that; when she blames him, he had deserved that. In this way, he makes her look like a good mother. ‘He’s just often a bad son to her’. It is a way of protecting her. If Tom doesn’t love his mother, then at least he cares a lot about her. Sometimes he will disobey her or talk back, but in general, he obeys her and tries to take care of her. One could say though that he is not much like a child, but more like a husband to her. He’s the man around the house, and Eloisa expects, and Tom shows, very mature behaviour in the house. For that part, it’s like they are on an equal level, or perhaps sometimes Tom even parents over his mother. He finds this normal though. Nevertheless, somewhere Tom knows that what his mother does isn’t always right, and he hasn’t forgotten her threats about the CPS. Also, he doesn’t want people to think or say anything bad about his mother. Therefore, he is very secretive about his home life.
Wizards and muggles: Tom doesn’t really consider himself a wizard or belonging to the wizarding world. His first loyalty is to the muggle world, the world of his mother and the world in which he grew up. Though Tom is slowly starting to consider Hogwarts as part of him, he is still not really sure what to think of it, and having only spent one year in the magical world, he still has a lot to learn about it. Therefore, he considers himself a muggle with a wand more than a wizard.
Sports: Sports means everything to Tom. It is the one thing he excels at, the one world of which he really feels he can be a part of. He has had good experiences there and to him it means appreciation and having something of himself. Therefore, Tom sports whenever he can. At Hogwarts, he flies a lot, and sometimes goes running; at home, when he can find people playing soccer in the park, he tries to get them so far to let him join.
Strengths: Sports. Polite to teachers. Concerned for his mother.
Weaknesses: Verbally, socially and probably also emotionally a bit underdeveloped. School. Unable to truly break the symbiotic bond with his mother.
Pets: None
Wand: Willow, 13 inch, phoenix feather.
Role-play Example:
The boy pressed his head against the cool window glass. It was noun and already very hot. He had already drunk the milk from his lunch package, but he was thirsty again. Perhaps he would go drink something at the fountain in the lavatory. For now though, he remained seated and stared at the landscape passing him by quickly. The hot weather made him lazy.
Tom was seated in an empty compartment of the Hogwarts express. The realisation that his first year was finished and the summer break had started, hadn’t fully dawned yet, but he was definitely on his way home now. The student’s trunk was placed next to him on the floor as he had not had the strength, not the length, to lift it up to the luggage rack. Of course, as long as he was on the train, he could still use magic, but though he knew what spell he should use, he didn’t dare to try it on a heavy trunk. It just wasn’t the same as a feather.
When the boy had finally had enough of staring at the endless green hills, he pulled away from the window, and instead opened his school bag and got out his package of sandwiches. The boy placed them on the small table in between the two benches and pretended to still be having one of the enormous lunches at Hogwarts. His mind was already at home however. Something uncomfortable was moving, just below his stomach, while he wondered how his mother would respond to his return. He knew he had been a bad man for abandoning her, but he hadn’t liked it either. Would she think his return was nothing special again and ignore him, like the last two times? He didn’t like that. But he had brought something that would make it up. The boy stared at his truck. Inside were apples, dried fruit, bagels and those weird peppermint balls. He thought the latter tasted a bit weird, but he had taken them anyway. His pockets had been very heavy and full when he had left the feast last night. But this way, he could also have a Hogwarts Feast with his mother. It wasn’t fair if he got all that food and she didn’t. This was the least he could do to make it up to her.
The small boy finished the last of his sandwiches and threw the paper that had been folded around them on the floor. Then he got up and walked over to the door, intending to go have a few gulps of water. Yet as he put his head outside the compartment door, he noticed a small group of students lining up in front of where the lavatory should be. And when a student came out of the small room, a prefect shoved the waiting students aside and went first, saying he had prefect duties to do.
Oh, bother those prefects! Thought Tom, while he entered his compartment again grumpily, for he didn’t like them anyway. The child decided to go try a little later and instead he sat down again and moved his head back against the cool window. Once more he got caught in at staring at the landscape that seemed to go on forever, getting closer and closer to home.
General Information
First Name: Tom
Last Name: Scott
Heritage: Muggleborn (most likely)
Birth date: 6th of March, 1962
Age: 12
Place of Birth: Canterbury
Current Location/Home: Canterbury
Look
General Appearance: Tom is slightly smaller than most boys of his age. His face is round and he’s a bit chubby. He’s got a slight tan and usually has a lot of colour in his face. His eyes are dark blue and framed with dark winkers. His hair is dark brown to black and wavy, but usually rather short cut. When he’s at Hogwarts though, he forgets to keep it short and it grows and becomes messy, until he returns home and his mother cuts it real short again. Tom’s body is healthy and he’s in good shape, though of course he doesn’t have any apparent muscle tissue as he is only a child.
Tom isn’t very aware of his looks and doesn’t care much about fashion of anything like that. Concerning clothes he is often ten years behind. This is partly because all the clothes Tom possesses (except for his uniform) come from charity centres and are second-hand and old. He usually wears his short trousers, though he has one long pair from his uniform, which he sometimes wears as normal trousers. Other than that he possesses a few buttoned down shirts which are usually half in and half out of his pants because he forgets to put them in properly, and a red and white blocked sweater which he wears almost the entire winter. These are the clothes he wears when he’s not wearing his uniform, that is, whenever he has the chance, because he finds his own clothes more comfortable than his uniform. His uniform used to be slightly too big, but he’s grown into the size pretty well.
Tom is the sort of boy who will walk around in the same clothes for weeks, until someone reminds him to put on something clean. He often forgets to wash himself or comb his hair. These things are just not very relevant to him. Therefore, Tom can look a bit dishevelled and some people rather stay away from him.
Eye Colour: Blue
Hair Colour: Very dark brown/black
Background
Parents: Eloisa M. Scott, Ivan Richards
Siblings: None
Other Family: None alive or whom there’s contact with
Personal History:
Background
Tom was born under what could be called unfortunate circumstances. His mother, Eloisa Scott, had no one left, and had a lot of resentment toward a world that had treated her bad from her point of view. Perhaps it could be stated that she had certain psychological problems, but she was never tested or diagnosed for anything. She held the world to be unsafe and unreliable, and she had great difficulties trusting people. She always expected the worst scenarios to happen and building up a healthy relationship was hard for her – nearly impossible – due to the lack of trust and also emotional commitment. Also, she was unpredictable. From one moment to the other, she could change from calm, to being angry and almost aggressive, to anxious, to claiming, to rejecting etc.
Eloisa was very young when she got pregnant, and Tom’s father, Ivan Richards, whom she was having an unsteady relationship with at that time, left her when he found out she was pregnant and never let her or his yet unborn son hear anything of him again. This confirmed Eloisa’s already existing mistrusting attitude toward the world, and men were from that point onward ‘uncaring, selfish and traitorous’.
Tom’s mother was desperate at this point in her life. She had no steady place of her own, no one to turn to, and was carrying an unwished-for child. She was in fact planning an illegal abortion, thinking she had no obligations toward this ‘parasite of a child’ and that she’d be better off without it, when she, visiting the grave of her parents and grandparents, felt the first kick of the unborn life. It was then and there that she realised that she did have an obligation. She could make things better for her child than they had been for her. As often with her, there was a really fast change in her thinking. She identified the still unborn child, with herself – it would be a girl – and herself with her mother. She could be the mother her own mother hadn’t been able to be. Her unborn child would live her life over, but perfect. It was not her only motive. Her child would keep her from loneliness; would stand by her side against the hostile world. The idea of a child, gave Eloisa a reason to live again. It became the one thing she desperately clung onto, because it was the only thing that gave meaning to her life. And once the idea was planted, she would lose all sense of meaning and identity if she would lose the child in any way. Hence the desperate clinging.
Now having a child coming, and also more willing to go on, it was easier for her to get financial aid. Eloisa managed to rent a small apartment in Canterbury, rejecting friendly gestures of neighbours, and in that way isolating herself and her unborn, but already completely planned out child from the evil outside world. With her secondary school not even finished, a pregnancy, a demeanour that made her look slightly crazy, and returning problems with colleagues, it was hard for her to find and keep a job, and she only worked shortly in a factory, before she lost her job just before a planned maternity leave and became dependant of social security again.
When Tom was born, it was a shock to Eloisa to find out her child was a boy, instead of the perfectly planned out girl, to represent herself. Also, she recognised Benjamin in him. She blamed Tom. Not only was he an intruder in her life, but he wouldn’t be who she had wanted him to be either. As if he was out to make her feel miserable, just like his father.
However, she couldn’t get rid of her son anymore now, and though the grudge would always remain, she soon found a new part to play for this child. No matter how much this child looked like his father, he wouldn’t be anything like him, or like any man. Tom would be the perfect man, not like all the others. He would make up for what the rest of the world did wrong – pay her back for his father and all men. He would protect her and never leave her. He would be everything she had wanted both his father and her own parents and grandparents to be. In this way, the child was still the project of her life, and she would be his. Together they would stand against the bad outside world. As long as they were together, everything was alright.
An ambiguity in her feelings toward the child would always remain however, and she would express it in her unpredictable behaviour as well as in very subtle messages and signs. On one hand there was the idealised version of Tom, whom she clung on to. On the other hand there was the idea of the intruder who represented all evil in the world.
Earliest years
Tom grew up in an unsafe and unstable situation. Even as a baby his mother’s love was never guaranteed. One moment, Eloisa would be taking him anywhere, talking to him sweetly, and he would be the apple of her eye, but the next moment, she would be cold and distant, and throughout everything the ambiguity of her feelings were picked up by the infant. Though of course these are things he cannot remember and he never picked up his mother’s thoughts and feelings consciously, they deeply affected him, probably all the more exactly because it was unconscious. Though not as strong as in his mother’s case, the world was unreliable to him, like his mother had been unreliable.
Eloisa had thought of how great it would be to have a child, company, and someone to love and receive love from. But she hadn’t been prepared for the fact that babies cry a lot, need clean diapers all the time, cost more money than she had, etc. As stated, she was very young and was all alone. She had no one to teach her how to deal with it, and no one to fall back on. She was already depressed and when the child just wouldn’t stop crying, and she didn’t know what to do, she got desperate. It was at those moments that she would be harsh to the baby, by leaving the apartment for a long time, and thereby the child, or yelling at him and at some moments, she considered whether it wouldn’t be better if they were just both dead. But though she was cold to him, the next moment, as said, she would cling to him, and he would be the project of her life.
Eloisa was supposed to find a job, a while after Tom’s birth, or she would no longer get the financial support she needed. However, until now, she has had periods in which she worked in factories, and periods in which she was unemployed. She was never able to keep her job for more than a few months. She would hate the work, partly because the interaction with her colleagues was always bad, and because she often felt sick. She claimed that bringing Tom into the world had severely damaged her health, and she was also often depressed. If she would stop working out of herself however, she wouldn’t get help. And so she would work and be sick a lot, until she was fired, then they would get help, but Eloisa was supposed to find a new job. She often pushed this off however, simply not having the energy, but there would always be the threat that this would be discovered and there would be no money at all. Therefore Eloisa kept working in factories, if she could get a job again, and have periods on unemployment and she and Tom never had much to spend and were partially dependant on charity.
Eloisa and Tom, in those early years, seemed one person. By the way Eloisa was clinging onto and dependent of her child, and Tom of course was that of his parent, they were almost experiencing themselves as one and the same thing. Them as one organism, against an unreliable world. Eloisa’s wishes were Tom’s wishes, and he would live for them. The clinginess was labelled ‘love’ and ‘protectiveness’, so that even in later years, Tom would never be able to cut the symbiotic bond. After all, all his mother had ever done was love and protect him. He shouldn’t be ungrateful. And since his identity and existence was so intertwined with his mother’s (she was also really the only person he had contact with), it wouldn’t be clear anymore who he would be, if he would go against the relationship.
Even from the moment Tom was very young, his mother expected him to play the role of a husband and father. She would talk to him as a child, but the topics were adult – what they would do for the day, the news, the world, their financial problems, her work, how her colleagues treated her unfairly - and she expected a mature and very concerned reaction. When she was sad, she’d expect Tom to comfort her. When she needed to talk, she talked to Tom. And the child wanted and would indeed give to his mother what he could, not only in ways that would be obvious to any outsider, but also in far more hidden ways. The fact that when he was two or three, he would cause trouble when he had to go to sleep, so that his mother would have to keep him with her all night, was perceived as ‘difficult behaviour’ by Eloisa, and it wasn’t unusual that she would get angry with him and punish him for it, hit him if she didn’t know what to do. But it would in fact keep her from the painful loneliness and meaninglessness, she so often experienced. In this way, Tom took care of his mother in many ways, which were neither seen nor praised, and of which he often wasn’t even conscious. Also for the obvious ways, Eloisa would usually not praise him, or think of it as special. After all, he should be grateful he was alive. And wasn’t she only giving him a lot of attention? Wasn’t she working incredibly hard, sacrificing her health to keep them from the streets? It was only logical that he would give something back after all she did for him. Tom’s giving was always taken for granted. He should contribute something too.
Tom was afraid of his mother as much as he loved her. She could yell at him all of a sudden that he was ungrateful and that she had never wanted him and that he was lucky to be born. She would suddenly blame him for all that was wrong, or she would threaten to put him on the street, or leave him behind. From when he was a small boy, he knew that any moment, he could do something wrong and his mother could explode. She could punish him harshly when she was angry. But though she would sometimes hurt him and he could be scared of her, he did nothing against it and passively accepted, and blamed it to himself. He did sometimes misbehave on purpose, after all, and he knew he was a burden to her. Also, he knew how difficult life was to her, and how much she had suffered and that she was very sad. And the next moment Eloisa would change again and he was all she lived for and the one she loved most, and without him, she would be nowhere. She would take him out for strolls, sing songs to him, cook him his favourite food on special days etc. He could not feel any bad things toward her because of this and he couldn’t blame her. Also, she needed him. Who would take care of her if he wouldn’t love her? And who would take care of him? Without her, he would be no one. And though Tom did play a mature role, Eloisa did do a lot for him, and was acting over-concerned. With all she did for him, he should give something back.
More binding however, were the more subtle, ambiguous messages that Eloisa could express in any way – a frown, silence, words that could be understood differently. Tom picked them up subconsciously, and on that level, he sensed all too well that his mother’s feelings toward him ambiguous and that she couldn’t really love him as much as she always said she did – that it was an act, and she hated him as much as she loved him. He would never show her that he knew it however, and he accepted whatever love he could get, indeed accepting the role of ungrateful, sacrificed-for child and he loved her and cared for her to make up for everything he and his father had done wrong to her. The contract of her fake love was always better than the risk of losing the love altogether. Just like the fusion she needed, and he too desired, was better than not being at all.
It should be emphasised that Tom never considered his mother bad and truly did love her. Many of these processes happened on a deep level, and neither of them were very aware of it. When Eloisa would be angry, it was because the world had treated her so bad, and Tom was only making it harder for her, or so he perceived it. The rest was covered under the label of ‘love’. Eloisa only showed how much she loved her child by being so clingy. And since the both of them had no one else, they could create a realm inside their home with rules and habits that were normal to them, even though it might be perceived weird or wrong to outsiders. Especially to Tom, it was the world as he knew it.
His father, on the other hand, really was a ‘bad guy’. From the moment he was born, Eloisa told Tom what miserable a man his father was. Tom indeed was brought up to see his father as a bad guy. He never really knew anything about the man, but he did not ‘want’ to know anything about him either. He was evil and Tom hated him. However, in a sense, this was very damaging. No matter how much Tom tried to be loyal to his mother, his father was a part of him. Without the man, he wouldn’t have existed, and in a sense, therefore, Tom was forced to betray a part of his existence. He hated, and his mother blamed, the cause of his existence, and a man whose genes Tom carried, no matter what. It was like there was a part in him that was bad and ugly and he was ashamed of it. This feeling was increased by Eloisa’s statements on how men were traitorous and bad. He was a man after all. Later, it would make him try and search for solutions to that, to somehow reconcile himself with his inherent evil. For now, however, he was too young to betray the silent contract with his mother.
Primary School
When he was four, Tom first went to school. He didn’t like it and he was often sick. Eloisa would easily keep him home. She would be annoyed about all the care she had to take of him, when he was sick and openly told him how much she had to do for him, while she had other things to do as well. But in fact, when Tom was sick, she didn’t have to be all alone at home at times she had no job, which was, though she didn’t realise it so clearly, why she always believed it and kept Tom home when he said he was sick. Tom being ill wasn’t faked. He did really feel ill and his body would really show it. He did not want to be sick, because he did not want to trouble his mother so much. He was feeling so guilty toward her already. However, on a deeper level, he did want to be sick, because him going to school and being away from his mother – living an own life – was betrayal toward her.
Growing up with only his mother around, Tom lacked social skills. He first didn’t play with other kids at all, and would usually just sit and watch, not understanding the use of many games, or play on his own. Later, if some kids accepted him, he would play along, but he would always keep some distance and never went to play at other kids’ houses or any of that, and he wasn’t able to adjust to the other children. He had to have the games his way, and when they’d share toys, he wanted to have more toys than the other kids, for example. Most kids would therefore leave him alone.
All through his primary school years, Eloisa would keep her double attitude and behaviour toward Tom. She would do good things for him, but then the next moment, she’d say bad things or punish him harshly again. Often, her behaviour was also double to Tom in the act itself, like when she had managed to buy him a birthday present, and she told him that at the orphanage, they had never celebrated birthdays like that and how hard it had been to save money for this. Though Tom was glad with the present – they usually just didn’t have money for anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary – those things spoiled it for a great deal. He would feel guilty instead. He didn’t know what to expect with her either. Once, when he was six, she had all off a sudden taken him to buy a rabbit. They actually couldn’t afford one, and it would give a lot of trouble in their apartment, but they bought it anyway. They took care of it for a few weeks, and then, when Tom loved his pet, Eloisa suddenly ordered him to kill it. When he couldn’t, even after his mother getting angry, Eloisa killed it and turning back to Tom she told him to never get attached to anything. They ate the creature, though Tom could only do it on Eloisa’s command. The boy was very upset and it was hard for him to accept that his mother had done such a thing, but ‘he didn’t like rabbits anyway’.
At times it was really a matter of struggling to get all their needs. When they were doing really bad, social security allowed Eloisa to get extra money for their basic needs, but she was often worried about this and shared these worries with Tom. Tom tried to comfort her, cooking dinner that night so she could rest, telling her everything would be alright etc. But it worried him too. In his child’s eyes it was even worse. He was afraid that they would one day starve. He didn’t realise that the state wouldn’t let a mother and a child die of starvation or anything like that. Partly because of this, food and collecting became an obsession. When he would get something nice to eat somewhere, he would save it and hide it, for later on (in the end he would either eat it or forget it), or give it to his mother, to help her, and when he had the chance to eat as much as he wanted, he would eat until he burst, just to be sure he hadn’t wasted any opportunity. Collecting things had been something he did before that, but now it became worse. Tom hardly had toys or any possessions really, but he would collect junk, just in case it would get in handy, and always wanted to have more than others. When his mother would find this junk, she would usually throw away everything that wasn’t valuable, but Tom would continue gathering ‘riches’.
Being socially awkward and distant, Tom soon became the outsider and, later on, the one who other kids would pick on. He tried to hide it, not wishing to burden his mother and ashamed of being the weak boy, but when Eloisa did find out, she would come to school often to complain and protect him, which practically only made it worse, for now he was a ‘mama’s boy’. Tom never really fought back and just took it passively, but when the other kids started saying bad things about his mother, he did become aggressive and started having fights. ‘No one would say a bad word about his mother!’
He was only a boy of six at the time, but nonetheless the school foresaw problems. And fighting was fighting. And so Eloisa was contacted once again. She was of course angry at Tom, for causing so much trouble for her again, but toward the school she held that Tom was misunderstood and that the other children were mean to her son and she blamed the school for not dealing with it effectively. Finally it was decided that Tom would be put in another class, so that he had a new chance to make contact with his classmates. Also Eloisa was advised to put Tom on a sport, so that he could deal with ‘his aggressive tendencies’.
Even though this meant he would be home less and there was hardly money for it, Eloisa did sign Tom up for soccer. She showed him her anger though. Because he was such an aggressive boy, she now had to pay contribution for a useless activity like sport. Though Tom had wanted to sport for a while – other boys did that too – he felt guilty and said he didn’t need to go on one. Eloisa only got angrier at that however and told him that he was going to fix his problem, so that he would not embarrass her anymore.
And so Tom indeed started playing soccer. Pretty soon, it turned out that he had a talent for it, and the coach often praised him. Though initially Tom hadn’t liked the fact that he was forced to go on a sport, when his mother didn’t seem happy about it, he soon started liking it a lot, even if it was just for the praise he received. This was after all something new to him. Eloisa hardly ever praised him, and he performed bad at school and only got told off there. To have the coach be so proud of him was a great push for Tom to train harder, even though the praise made him feel a little threatened too. The fact that Tom was good at sports, made some of his new classmates admire him, and Tom wasn’t picked on anymore, even though he would always keep distance.
As I just said, Tom never performed very well in school. His grades were very low, and this would remain throughout his whole primary school time. Especially reading and writing was a problem to him. His mother would get angry over it. She wanted Tom to be the best of the class. The boy’s difficulties with learning would remain however. Tom often got punished at school for making very obvious mistakes and handing things in, written in a very messy handwriting, or for being apparently too lazy to memorize things. However, it didn’t make his work any better. What it did cause was for Tom to hate school even more. Now it was not only a betrayal toward his mother, but also a place where it became obvious that he was stupid and he was hit for it. It also encouraged his school sickness. When Eloisa found out her son was physically punished for his performance however, she came to school again and stood up for Tom, claiming again that her boy was misunderstood, and that they shouldn’t even dare to touch her child again. Eloisa didn’t get him to another school though, and didn’t get him extra tutoring or anything like that. There wouldn’t have been money for that anyway.
When Tom had started going to school, he had noticed that other children did have a father, and he had seen that their fathers were not evil. Slowly his own father had become an issue again. He wasn’t allowed to acknowledge the man, and his father was bad. But he was a part of Tom, like a demon inside of him he should fear and be ashamed of. However, by now Tom secretly started making up myths about the person of his father, to deal with this bad part of him, and because he longed for a father. He fantasised that his father had actually been a good man, but had left for some noble cause. Or that he had left to return one day. Or that he had wanted to stay but couldn’t. In all these myths, the core idea was that his father was not really evil, but that he had loved Tom and his mother and that he would return one day. And in his imagination his father always looked like his coach.
His coach was a substitute for a father to Tom, and it was the reason he got more and more into sports. Tom loved the praise he received and all the time he tried to catch his coach’s attention, by trying to learn new tactics, which would earn him praise again. Tom adored the man and sometimes he dreamed that his coach was actually his father, who had secretly come to Canterbury to watch over his son and Tom eagerly waited for the day his coach would tell. He tried to get alone with the man as often as possible, hoping to give him a chance, so he would at last tell. The coach on his side, probably suspected that not everything was alright in Tom’s home. That, combined with the fact that Tom was a bit timid on the team at first, asked for a lot of praise and attention and hung around him so much, made him take the boy under his wing a bit, praising him, making sure his still underdeveloped social skills didn’t get him into trouble with the other boys on the team, and trying to get a story about his home life out of him, though he failed in the latter. Tom was too protective of his mother. Nevertheless his coach became a very important person in the boy’s life, and making the man proud became one of Tom’s major goals.
Even though, when he grew older, Tom realised that the particular idea of his coach being his father was madness, he remained making up myths around the person of his father. He never told his mother though, and he always felt guilty when he thought of his father. It was betrayal toward his mother. He should pick her side; after all she had done for him. But what if his father hadn’t meant to cause her so much pain? He really did want to believe that.
Tom sported whenever he could, and in the times his mother was in yelling-mode, he could flee there. It gave him an excuse to stay away, and he enjoyed spending time around the coach he admired so much and outside of trainings, he just enjoyed doing something he was good at for once. Sports gave Tom a bit of self-esteem. Where the guilt toward his mother, and the frustrations at school could make him feel worthless, sports gave him the hope that there were things he was good at. The praise he received stimulated this even more. It also helped him identify himself with something, being a person outside of the ‘bad man’ he was in his relationship with his mother. It had also gotten him out of his socially isolated position. Though it happened slowly, Tom developed more social skills over the years, and though he’d still rather keep people at a distance, he at least became more conscious of what he could expect in social situations. Outside of sports, he remained a rather shy and timid boy, but he did learn what it was like to have social interaction.
Being picked on earlier, which was done by other boys, and always having been stigmatised by his mother for being a male, ‘manhood’ was an important theme in Tom’s life. Ashamed to be a man because of his father’s sins and feeling like he was less than other men, because other boys picked on him, Tom had started thinking and perhaps also hoping, that he was not a man, that perhaps he was a girl, or something in between. Soccer helped him to change that view a bit. First of all, he identified sports with males, and him playing a sport made him more masculine therefore. Then there was the contact with the boys on his team, which, though he was still a bit distant, made him feel like he was a part of ‘the guys’. Third, there was the example of his coach, whom Tom tried to act like, so that he felt like he knew how to act ‘like a man’.
Getting a little self-esteem, having contact outside of the home, experiences, a hobby, etc, influenced the way Tom acted at home. He saw himself more as an own person and now and then he disobeyed his mother, not simply because he was a child and was testing limits, but because he really disagreed with her. Tom himself experienced this individuation as something scary and wrong however, and would often feel guilty. He would respond to that by staying at home some more, and trying to show his mother that he loved her and would never leave her. To Eloisa, Tom’s every step away from her was a big threat, for she never wanted to experience the pain of separation again. To avoid it, when Tom would not obey, she would punish him harshly, hoping to stop the process. Also, if he would stay away a lot Eloisa would make him feel guilty. She would tell him that he could stay away, and that she would be fine on her own. Sarcastically, she would say that of course everything was about Tom, and that all her concern was to be taken for granted. ‘But she didn’t blame him. She was used to being rejected. And this was just how men were. Men only cared about themselves in the end.’ Or sometimes she would just ignore him and shrug at every attempt of Tom to make it up to her and pretend it was nothing. It made him lessen his time for sports a bit. He was already feeling guilty for his secret thoughts about his father and he definitely did not want to lose his mother’s love. Indeed when he was home more often it was rewarded with Eloisa paying attention to him. Again, she started telling him how much she loved him and how he was all she had. In this way, through all the years of primary school, Tom had to balance between dedication to his hobby and the coach, and his loyalty toward his mother.
In Tom’s last year of primary school his mother had some problems with the social security, which meant a part of her income was cancelled. This forced Tom to stop playing soccer on the team. He was sad about it, but there was no choice. At that time, instead, he tried to be home more often to support his mother.
Hogwarts
Tom had never known he was a wizard until he was eleven. His mother was a muggle, and his father was most likely one too. Little unexplainable things had been marked as coincidence or had been ignored and soon been forgotten again. Tom would go to a normal secondary school. Eloisa had already given up her hopes of Tom being the best of his class and instead claimed him to be very misunderstood. He would just go to school and after that get a low-income job, because society didn’t understand him, just like it had never understood her. Society was unfair toward people like them.
At the end of Tom’s primary school however, a man from the ministry of magic came to the Scotts’ apartment to inform Eloisa and her son of the fact that Tom was a wizard and accepted at Hogwarts. To people who had never believed in magic, this of course came over as plainly ridiculous and Eloisa, already very mistrusting, thought that this was some trick to steal her son away. The idea that the Child Protection Services would take her son away from her had always been an obsession for her, and she had often told Tom about how people could take him away from her and all the horrible things that could happen to him then, just to make sure that he would not tell bad things about his home life. Now she was afraid that Child Protection, or perhaps another organisation, was out to take her son from her. The man from the ministry showed magic to proof that this was no trick and that his story was true, but was nevertheless thrown out with the warning to not come back. A frightened or angry reaction from muggles however was a not very uncommon thing and the man said he would come back later and they could think it over.
Eloisa then questioned Tom, blaming him of doing things behind her back and she wanted to know exactly how much he knew of the man. The boy however was just as surprised as his mother, and just as scared of being separated from her by going to some school far away. After this Eloisa started constantly saying he’d leave her to go to that school (as if he could, by his own decision), because he didn’t care about her. Tom tried to tell his mother that he would never leave her. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help thinking of this school. He felt that this was the reason he had never fitted in and he wondered about magic and all of that. The thought that he was a very special person fascinated him. ‘He had been chosen for something very rare and important. Other kids just went to normal, mediocre schools. But he was meant for a better school.’ And somewhere he desired to betray his mother; to be that bad man he knew he was. Nevertheless his mother had first place, and he felt guilty for his thoughts and therefore tried to push them away.
But in the end, Eloisa changed her mind, before any possible conflict could appear. She had always known she was special, just like Tom. This was why they had never fitted in. Now Tom could develop his talent. And it was only logical he’d neglect her wishes for that. Men were always traitors in the end. And so Tom would go to Hogwarts so he could be selfish there. (What also helped was the fact that there was a fund for children who couldn’t afford their school necessities, and Tom would live at school, meaning it would save money, but that was only mentioned as a small argument). This way of thinking from his mother in fact made the boy more reluctant to go to the school and he was conflicted and confused and didn’t know how to respond and what the woman really wanted. And so he responded by simply not responding and passively going to Hogwarts indeed.
The closer it came, the less happy the boy was about it. His mother started blaming him, not only openly, but also by wondering who would take care of her if she would become sick again and mentioning Tom’s father more often. Tom, from his side, did not only feel more and more guilty, but was also scared of going to a strange school (even though he had received much information, had already bought his stuff etc.) far away. He had never been away from his mother for even one night. He now told his mother that he didn’t have to go, but she said plans had been made already.
At Hogwarts a new world opened to him. First of all, there was enough food to stuff himself full every meal. Slowly he started becoming less obsessive about food, though he definitely did become chubbier throughout his first year. Classes were all new to him. There were many things he simply didn’t know about, and he learnt more about the war going on. Of course the man from the Ministry had mentioned You-Know-Who, but he had made it seem not so bad, representing the Ministry, which should tackle this problem after all. This war hardly scared Tom, probably because he didn’t realise the seriousness of the situation, and more importantly because he had more on his mind. Tom was terribly homesick and in those first months he spent many nights hiding under his blanket and crying, because he missed his mother. He would write her short letters and notes almost every day to make up for him being gone, but now that he was at Hogwarts he knew how much of a bad decision this had been, and a few times he considered to run away from school and go home, by foot if necessary (topography had never been his strongest point). He never did though, and in the end, though he still wanted to go home, he got used to being away from his mother and looking forward to the break, his first chance to return.
It turned out that also here, Tom didn’t perform well in class. He had hoped that here he would turn out to be talented after all, but he was soon disappointed in that. Concerning essays and reading, he kept having his difficulties and not every professor was pleased with Tom’s messy handwriting and terrible spelling. The boy did soon notice however that corporal punishment was apparently not used in Hogwarts and to a boy who had not only learnt to hate, but also to be afraid of school, this was a great relief. With his wand, Tom didn’t perform all too miserable, but he wasn’t very good at it either. His hate for school also stood in the way for him to enjoy his classes and with his lack of motivation – all the more because he was feeling guilty toward his mother and actually didn’t want to be here – he didn’t try very hard to pay attention either, which made him bad at subjects like Astronomy and Potions.
The only exception was Flying. Tom had realised that there was no soccer in the wizarding world, and this had been a great disappointment to him. But when he realised that there was a wizard sport, he had already looked forward to at least learn about that. Turning out to be good at flying, and this coming closest to sports, Tom enjoyed those classes and outside of class, though he did not have an own broom, he flew on the school brooms whenever there was one available. Flying gave him a new sort of freedom. It helped him emptying his mind from the frustrating classes. When it was just him and his broom, he felt closest to home and to his mother, whom he still missed terribly. He also learned much about Quidditch and started to like the sport. He didn’t try out for the team though, not only because he was too late but also because he was sure he could never be good enough to play on the house team and was rather intimidated by the older students who were on it.
Tom’s social skills were still underdeveloped compared to other children of his age. He usually didn’t talk to others, unless they talked to him, and he kept his distance, not really wanting to have to do much with people who had taken him away from his mother. Also, he wouldn’t take care of himself that well (clean clothes, washing himself, combing his hair) and would come over as rather asocial, and so other students would stay away from him usually. He did know his classmates by the end of the year and sometimes talked to them, but he didn’t have any real friends. He didn’t miss them though. Tom was used to social isolation. Considering his home situation, one could almost say it was a command to isolate himself. That was always how his mother had solved things too after all.
During the breaks, Tom would go back to Canterbury of course. He had feared that maybe his mother would be rejecting after he had left, and this fear was well-founded, because indeed Eloisa acted rather uncaring about Tom’s return. Later on in the breaks, she would sometimes be different, but Tom felt guilty and sad anyway. And he always dreaded going back to school and in the first few days after a return he felt very miserable. What if his mother would repudiate him?
Tom never told his mother much about the magical world. In their home, they simply didn’t ask each other many questions, and so Eloisa didn’t ask Tom much about school, and Tom didn’t tell her too much either, knowing that his school and his mother didn’t go together anyway. He didn’t want to give his mother the idea that he enjoyed the magical world, or she could think he would leave her. Also, didn’t tell her about the war, as it was not a topic very relevant to him. The boy himself didn’t even quite get the magical world yet.
Tom finished his first year with low grades, except for flying. During the End of Year feast he tried to stuff as much conservable food in his pockets as he could, so that he could take it home. It would be a waste not to do so after all. Tom was very glad to be able to return home, even though he was a little afraid of how his mother would act.
Character Traits
Personality:
Self-centred: Tom is quite self-centred. This doesn’t mean that he cares about no one. Considering how much he looks after his mother (even though he feels like he doesn’t and feels he’s selfish), it wouldn’t be fair to state this. It is true that he doesn’t care much for others when it is not his mother, but self-centred should rather be interpreted as only looking from his own perspective. Tom’s social skills are still underdeveloped and this is a part of it. He has a hard time understanding the other person’s position and always wants things his way, because to him, that is the only way of seeing things. This self-centeredness is for example noticeable in the fact that Tom usually doesn’t ask other people questions. When someone asks him how his holiday was, he will answer shortly, but he will not return the question. In that way, he is indeed the centre of his world and others are only relevant to him when they relate to his world.
Self-esteem: This doesn’t lead him to be arrogant though. Being blamed by his mother all the time and the only thing he really learned in school being that ‘he’s stupid’, Tom has quite a low self-esteem. Sports and his coach’s praise and support helped him to build it up a bit, but Tom is still insecure about his capabilities. When it comes to performance, he is often convinced that he will do bad. Sports is his great exception. He knows he’s good at it, which is one of the reasons he loves it so much, but even there he has his limits of course.
School: In school, his self-esteem is lowest. Tom performs bad in class, especially on theoretical parts or when he has a lot of reading and writing to do, and though he has never experienced a teacher hurting a student at Hogwarts, he is still somewhat afraid. At the same time, he’s not trying very hard either. Tom is not very motivated and sometimes plainly lazy when it comes to school. He will zone out in class and he’s not trying very hard on his homework either. So not only the form (spelling etc.) of his essays are bad, but also the content. Knowing he’s ‘stupid’, he doesn’t care much either.
Teachers: He is still afraid of teachers however. Though sometimes in social situations Tom doesn’t know what is expected of him, he knows perfectly how to talk politely to a teacher and he will always try it just a little bit more. He doesn’t like them though.
Special: Tom may have a low self-esteem, but he does like to think himself a very special person. He sometimes thinks that he was chosen for some special goal and that one day he’ll be a very important and admired person. Actually the world just misunderstands him, he sometimes thinks, and he is very talented.
Distance: Tom is a bit of a loner. The one big key to getting him to interact from out of himself is sports. In other situations, he rather keeps people at a distance. He doesn’t hate them or anything. In fact, he doesn’t think much of them at all. He’s just not really interested in other people and he rather avoids making all too much contact. As said, isolation is almost an order, though never spoken out in that way.
Mistrust: It wouldn’t be fair to say that Tom is extremely mistrusting. He doesn’t think there’s an enemy around every corner and he doesn’t think people are always out to hurt him. However, he is often very careful when it comes to new situations and contact with other people. He is prepared for people perhaps having bad motives and he does have a tendency to expect the worst of new situations. This is why he is usually careful to try new things. This can concern small things like which flavour of ice-cream to choose, but also bigger things like joining a group. This perhaps pessimistic approach to life is not an all-dominating trait, that controls his every decisions. Tom does sometimes embark on something new. Rather, it is a tendency.
Verbal skills: Tom doesn’t come from the most educated milieu and this is reflected in, for example, his verbal skills. With only his mother around in the first years, Tom didn’t develop a very broad vocabulary. In school and on the soccer team, he learnt more of course, but still he is not very good at expressing himself verbally and sometimes still doesn’t know what certain words mean. This is not only a difficulty in school, but also outside of it, when he tries to explain what he means. It doesn’t mean Tom is not able to talk properly. He is perfectly able to communicate, but his vocabulary is perhaps smaller than that of his peers, and he has difficulties formulating sentences in a way that it will convince the other, or to put a story in a good telling-order, and when it comes to talking about what’s going on inside of him, he often lacks the verbal skills and vocabulary to explain.
Inner world: Perhaps partly because he is unable to give words to it, or perhaps influencing his disability to find words for it, is the fact that Tom is often not very well aware of what’s going on inside of him. Usually he’s not very sure of what he’s feeling and what he wants. The latter is reflected in the fact that Tom doesn’t have much ‘favourites’. Though he tends to pick the things he’s tried before, when this is not relevant, Tom usually doesn’t care about what colour of shirt to pick, what animal he likes best, whether he prefers Potions or Arithmancy. He does not care very much about these things and is usually rather passive when it comes to decision making.
Eloisa: Even though she sometimes treats him harshly and blames him for many things, Tom’s mother is his priority number one. Tom tends to think of himself as a bad person. When she treats him harshly, he had deserved that; when she blames him, he had deserved that. In this way, he makes her look like a good mother. ‘He’s just often a bad son to her’. It is a way of protecting her. If Tom doesn’t love his mother, then at least he cares a lot about her. Sometimes he will disobey her or talk back, but in general, he obeys her and tries to take care of her. One could say though that he is not much like a child, but more like a husband to her. He’s the man around the house, and Eloisa expects, and Tom shows, very mature behaviour in the house. For that part, it’s like they are on an equal level, or perhaps sometimes Tom even parents over his mother. He finds this normal though. Nevertheless, somewhere Tom knows that what his mother does isn’t always right, and he hasn’t forgotten her threats about the CPS. Also, he doesn’t want people to think or say anything bad about his mother. Therefore, he is very secretive about his home life.
Wizards and muggles: Tom doesn’t really consider himself a wizard or belonging to the wizarding world. His first loyalty is to the muggle world, the world of his mother and the world in which he grew up. Though Tom is slowly starting to consider Hogwarts as part of him, he is still not really sure what to think of it, and having only spent one year in the magical world, he still has a lot to learn about it. Therefore, he considers himself a muggle with a wand more than a wizard.
Sports: Sports means everything to Tom. It is the one thing he excels at, the one world of which he really feels he can be a part of. He has had good experiences there and to him it means appreciation and having something of himself. Therefore, Tom sports whenever he can. At Hogwarts, he flies a lot, and sometimes goes running; at home, when he can find people playing soccer in the park, he tries to get them so far to let him join.
Strengths: Sports. Polite to teachers. Concerned for his mother.
Weaknesses: Verbally, socially and probably also emotionally a bit underdeveloped. School. Unable to truly break the symbiotic bond with his mother.
Other Information
Pets: None
Wand: Willow, 13 inch, phoenix feather.
Role-play Example:
The boy pressed his head against the cool window glass. It was noun and already very hot. He had already drunk the milk from his lunch package, but he was thirsty again. Perhaps he would go drink something at the fountain in the lavatory. For now though, he remained seated and stared at the landscape passing him by quickly. The hot weather made him lazy.
Tom was seated in an empty compartment of the Hogwarts express. The realisation that his first year was finished and the summer break had started, hadn’t fully dawned yet, but he was definitely on his way home now. The student’s trunk was placed next to him on the floor as he had not had the strength, not the length, to lift it up to the luggage rack. Of course, as long as he was on the train, he could still use magic, but though he knew what spell he should use, he didn’t dare to try it on a heavy trunk. It just wasn’t the same as a feather.
When the boy had finally had enough of staring at the endless green hills, he pulled away from the window, and instead opened his school bag and got out his package of sandwiches. The boy placed them on the small table in between the two benches and pretended to still be having one of the enormous lunches at Hogwarts. His mind was already at home however. Something uncomfortable was moving, just below his stomach, while he wondered how his mother would respond to his return. He knew he had been a bad man for abandoning her, but he hadn’t liked it either. Would she think his return was nothing special again and ignore him, like the last two times? He didn’t like that. But he had brought something that would make it up. The boy stared at his truck. Inside were apples, dried fruit, bagels and those weird peppermint balls. He thought the latter tasted a bit weird, but he had taken them anyway. His pockets had been very heavy and full when he had left the feast last night. But this way, he could also have a Hogwarts Feast with his mother. It wasn’t fair if he got all that food and she didn’t. This was the least he could do to make it up to her.
The small boy finished the last of his sandwiches and threw the paper that had been folded around them on the floor. Then he got up and walked over to the door, intending to go have a few gulps of water. Yet as he put his head outside the compartment door, he noticed a small group of students lining up in front of where the lavatory should be. And when a student came out of the small room, a prefect shoved the waiting students aside and went first, saying he had prefect duties to do.
Oh, bother those prefects! Thought Tom, while he entered his compartment again grumpily, for he didn’t like them anyway. The child decided to go try a little later and instead he sat down again and moved his head back against the cool window. Once more he got caught in at staring at the landscape that seemed to go on forever, getting closer and closer to home.