The newspaper crinkled like a bag of potato chips as Tom Riddle leaned over it, his elbows planted firmly on the kitchen table. His eyes skimmed line after line, darting faster than most people blinked.
The sun had barely pulled itself above the hedges outside, but Tom was already three cups of tea into his morning routine—tea he'd brewed himself, though he always forgot the sugar. "Listen to this!" Tom said loudly, words spilling as if he were trying to empty the entire article onto the room at once. "Impossible theft at the Grocer's Mart. No broken locks, no signs of entry, and the entire security office swears the tapes are clean. Police arrested the night guard—case closed."
From the other side of the table came only a groan, followed by the thump of a forehead landing on folded arms. John Riddle, hair sticking up in every possible direction, muttered something that sounded like, "Let me die in peace."
Tom ignored the plea. He was incapable of noticing when his enthusiasm grated on someone—especially his brother. "Case closed!" Tom repeated, almost scandalized. "But it makes no sense. If there was no sign of entry, how did anyone get the goods out? What did they take? It just says 'valuable merchandise.' That's not even proper reporting." John lifted his head just far enough to squint at him.
"You're… reading a crime article. At breakfast. On your birthday." His voice was flat, but his mouth twitched like he was seconds from laughing. "Yes!" Tom declared proudly, missing the joke entirely. "What better way to celebrate turning thirteen than unraveling incompetence in the daily press?" "You're insane," John said, and let his head flop back down. Tom flicked the newspaper toward him, missing and hitting the half-empty cereal bowl instead. Milk splashed, narrowly avoiding John's arm. "Get up! Come on, this is fascinating. Don't you wonder how someone could commit a theft without leaving a single trace?"
"I'm wondering," John mumbled, "how I can commit fratricide and still get to sleep another hour before school." "You'd never manage it," Tom said briskly. "Besides, you'd miss breakfast. Speaking of which—Mum!" From the stove, Mrs. Riddle turned halfway, frying pan in hand. Her hair was pinned up haphazardly, like she'd wrestled with it while also wrestling the eggs. "Stop shouting across the house, Tom. And John, for heaven's sake, sit up straight before you drown yourself in cornflakes."
"Yes, Mrs. Riddle," John muttered automatically. He never said "Mum." It wasn't resentment—it was precision. He wasn't theirs, not by blood, and John refused to pretend otherwise. Tom didn't notice, of course. He'd already gone back to scanning the paper, lips moving faster than his thoughts. His father always said Tom had a brain like a magnifying glass—blisteringly sharp, but liable to set things on fire without realizing.
Mr. Riddle wandered in at that moment, tie already fastened, eyes hooded with the calm alertness of a detective who never stopped thinking. He dropped a kiss on his wife's temple, sniffed the air, and poured himself black coffee. No sugar, no milk. Just bitterness. "Morning, boys," he said, his voice steady but absent, like it was half somewhere else. "Excited for your last day of school?"
"Yes," John said quickly. "No," Tom said at the exact same time. Mr. Riddle allowed himself a ghost of a smile. "Figures." He leaned over, plucked the newspaper from Tom's elbow, and scanned the article himself. "Sloppy reporting," he muttered, echoing Tom's earlier words. "If there was no sign of forced entry, how did they establish guilt?"
"Exactly!" Tom said, springing upright, triumphant. "The whole thing stinks." Mr. Riddle shrugged, folded the paper, and set it aside. "Or the reporter left out half the facts. Don't waste your energy, Tom. Sometimes the world is duller than it looks on paper." Tom frowned as though the very idea were offensive. John, meanwhile, finally pulled himself upright and reached for toast.
"You two are terrifying in the morning. Like crime-obsessed parrots. Can we just eat and go fail exams in peace?"
"You don't fail exams," Tom corrected. "You pass them at a statistically average rate."
John smirked. "Which is a polite way of saying I fail compared to you."
Tom blinked, puzzled why John was smiling at that, then forgot the entire exchange as Mrs. Riddle set a plate of eggs in front of him. His brain simply could not cling to two threads at once when food was involved.
Breakfast rolled on like that—banter, small quarrels, Mr. Riddle lost in thoughts of cases, Mrs. Riddle keeping the chaos contained. Just enough normalcy to be comforting, just enough oddness to make it theirs. By the time the boys pulled on their school bags and headed out the door, the sun was bright and the street buzzing with the last-day-of-school energy.
Kids were already shouting down the block, someone set off a cheap firecracker, and the air smelled faintly of cut grass and hot pavement. Tom strode ahead, animated, pointing at cracks in the sidewalk as if they were clues to some grand conspiracy. John ambled behind, yawning, waving at neighbors, slipping easily into smiles where Tom bulldozed past. "You know," Tom said, spinning around mid-step, "the theft report is inconsistent. They say the thief left no trace, yet they arrested the guard. That implies circumstantial evidence only. Which means—"
"Which means," John cut in, "you're about to talk the whole way to school about pineapples or shopping carts or whatever they stole, and I'm going to go insane."
"You don't appreciate the elegance of puzzles," Tom said, shaking his head in dismay. "And you," John shot back, "don't appreciate how much humans hate listening to long explanations before nine in the morning."
Tom actually stopped walking, staring at him as though John had just described an alien civilisation. "Why would anyone not want to know how things connect? It's like wilfully ignoring a treasure map."
John grinned. "Because sometimes people prefer breakfast over treasure. That's humanity for you."
Tom rolled his eyes so hard it was a wonder they didn't fall out, then resumed marching toward school. John fell into step beside him, bumping his shoulder lightly against Tom's to keep him from drifting into the road. And so the brothers went, mismatched as always: one chasing riddles in the cracks of the world, the other watching people and weaving words in his head, both unaware that the strange little supermarket theft would matter far more than anyone thought.
The school gates looked less like an institution that morning and more like the entrance to a festival. Kids were flooding in, hollering and skipping, their shirts untucked in premature rebellion. Last day of term—it buzzed in the air like static. Tom and John walked through the chaos with very different energies. Tom carried himself stiffly, backpack bouncing, as though he had to maintain dignity until the final bell. John shoved his bag on one shoulder, grinning at nearly everyone they passed. "Riddle brothers!"
someone shouted."Last day, thank God!"
"Thank Tom," John called back, deadpan, pointing at his brother. "He made the year twice as long with all his questions."
Tom didn't dignify it with a response. He marched straight into the building, muttering under his breath, "Questions are the oxygen of intellect."
Classes blurred, as they always did on final days. Teachers had half given up, handing back exam papers with distracted smiles. Paper airplanes swooped overhead. Someone had smuggled a bag of water balloons. When Tom's exam results landed on his desk, his heart leapt. Perfect marks. Every subject. The inked red "100%" at the top glowed like treasure. His chest expanded with satisfaction—yet underneath, a strange twinge. If school was over for the summer, who was going to grade him now? Who was going to prove he was at the top?
Across the room, John unfolded his own paper. A neat "67" sat in the corner. Respectable. Safe. Average. He stared at it longer than necessary, willing it to change. His fingers itched for a pen, for the rhythm of writing, numbers and words weaving into patterns. He was good at those puzzles. But exams were about recall, not imagination.
Tom turned in his seat, beaming. "Nailed it. Absolutely nailed it." John smirked faintly. "Of course you did."
"You don't even want to see my score?"
"Nope."
"You're impossible."
"And you're predictable," John said, crumpling his results into his bag like they didn't matter, though the set of his jaw betrayed him.
At lunch, Greg slid into their orbit. He was lean and wiry, with a sharpness in his grin that matched the sarcasm always perched on his tongue. He slapped Tom's back hard enough to nearly knock him into his sandwich. "Birthday boy!" Greg announced. "How does it feel to be fourteen? Old enough to pay taxes, right?" "
That's not how it works," Tom muttered, recovering his sandwich with surgical precision.
"It's how it should work," Greg said. "Make kids pay taxes, maybe then we'll stop funding wars with our lunch money." John choked on his drink, laughing.
"Greg, it's ten in the morning and you're already starting on politics?"
"Always," Greg said. "It's my cardio. Also it's like twelve, I can make all the jokes I want" Tom sighed as though both of them were conspiring against order. "
Can we please talk about something rational? Like the logical inconsistencies in—"
"—the great pineapple heist," John interrupted smoothly. Greg perked up. "Pineapples? That's what was stolen?" John grinned. "Apparently."
Greg leaned back, smirking. "Then it's settled. The culprit's clearly part of a pineapple cartel. Or maybe the Illuminati. Honestly, Tom, how do you not see this?"
Tom groaned. "You're both insufferable." But he was smiling faintly, even as he tried to hide it behind his sandwich. The afternoon dragged toward release. Each class dissolved into chatter. Teachers didn't bother stopping it. At one point, someone released a small swarm of paper planes shaped like birds, and the entire room erupted in cheers. When the final bell rang, the school burst open like a shaken soda bottle. Children ran, shouted, threw papers into the air like confetti.
Someone upended a bin and rolled it across the courtyard like a victory chariot. John whooped with them, pumping a fist in the air, the joy of freedom filling his lungs. "Summer! Finally!" Tom stood beside him, clutching his perfect exam papers like they were the crown jewels. He felt a pang—a deep ache that the structured rhythm of school had ended.
"It's inefficient," he muttered. "Three months wasted when we could be learning."
"You're allergic to joy," John teased, elbowing him. "Besides, you've got a birthday party today. That's at least a little learning—you'll get to study how people interact."
Tom narrowed his eyes but couldn't fully smother the flutter in his chest. His birthday. Yes. That was different. His birthday was a project. He liked projects. Greg fell in step beside them as they left the grounds.
"So, what's the party plan? Clowns? Fireworks? A ritual sacrifice to the pineapple gods?"
"No clowns," Tom said firmly. "No fireworks," Mrs. Riddle had told him earlier that week.
"Maybe the sacrifice," John said, grinning.
They all laughed, walking side by side, summer pressing down warm and thick, the weight of school lifted into nothing. Tom still clutched his papers, sad and proud, while John stuffed his deeper into his bag, already pretending they didn't exist. Two brothers, two directions, one long summer ahead. And behind it all—the quiet echo of a newspaper article Tom had read aloud that morning. A theft the world thought was solved, but which was really only just beginning.