The bell of Flourish and Blotts chimed as Andrew and Professor McGonagall stepped inside. The shop was a cathedral of parchment, the scent of old leather and vanilla-thick ink filling the air. For a boy who loved the heavy, detailed prose of Tolkien, this was a sanctuary.
"I'll leave you to find your required texts, Andrew," McGonagall said, her eyes lingering on him with a trace of that lingering anxiety. "I must step across to the Apothecary for a moment. Stay within the shop."
"Of course, Professor," Andrew said, his smile as polite and charismatic as ever.
As she stepped out, Andrew began to wander. He noticed it immediately—the shift in the atmosphere. A wizard in violet robes dropped his stack of books when Andrew turned a corner. A witch near the "Charms" section gasped, clutching her throat, her face draining of all color. They weren't looking at him with the warmth of the Goblins or the curiosity of the Muggle world. They were looking at him with raw, naked terror.
Is there something on my face? Andrew wondered, feeling a rare flicker of self-consciousness.
He walked toward a display labeled Modern Magical History. A thick, leather-bound volume titled The Rise and Fall of Dark Magic sat on a pedestal. Curious, he opened it.
His breath hitched. His heart didn't just skip a beat; it seemed to stop entirely.
There, on a moving parchment page, was a photograph of a young man in Hogwarts robes. He was leaning against a stone wall, looking cool, aristocratic, and devastatingly handsome. He had the same dark, wavy hair. The same sharp, elegant jawline. The same high forehead.
It was like looking into a mirror that showed him five years in the future.
Andrew's jaw dropped. He stared at the moving image, watching the boy in the book give a slow, cold smirk—a gesture Andrew would never make, yet it was his own mouth doing it.
"It's... it's me," Andrew whispered, his voice trembling for the first time.
He scanned the text beneath the photo. It spoke of a "Dark Lord" who had terrorized Britain for decades, a man who had brought the wizarding world to the brink of extinction. But the book never used a birth name. It referred to him only as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named or Lord Voldemort.
Andrew let out a long, shaky breath and slowly brought his hand to his face, performing a frustrated facepalm.
"Of course," he muttered behind his palm. "No wonder Tom the innkeeper looked like he'd seen a ghost. No wonder the lady in the charms aisle looked ready to faint. I'm walking around with the face of the Wizarding World's version of Morgoth."
He looked back at the book. This "Voldemort" was the shadow Ollivander had warned him about. The man who broke things.
A sudden, sharp resolve hardened in Andrew's chest. He wasn't afraid of the likeness; he was annoyed by it. If the world wanted to judge him by his skin, he would simply have to show them the soul of the smith beneath it. He closed the book with a firm thud.
"Well," Andrew whispered to the empty aisle, his charismatic spark returning with a defiant edge. "If I have the face of a Dark Lord, I suppose I'll just have to be the brightest Light they've ever seen. I'm going to need a lot more than just textbooks to fix this reputation."
He turned away from the history section, his head held high. He wouldn't hide. He would walk through Hogwarts with that face, and he would make every person who looked at him realize that the man in the book was a failure—and he was the masterpiece.
The transition to the hidden platform was exactly the kind of "threshold" Andrew loved in his books. Following Professor McGonagall's instructions, he had walked directly at the solid barrier between platforms nine and ten. He didn't flinch; he trusted the structure of the world.
He emerged into a thick cloud of steam that smelled of coal, oil, and ancient enchantments. Towering before him was the Hogwarts Express, a scarlet steam engine that looked like a living, breathing creature of iron.
"Magnificent," Andrew whispered, his eyes instantly tracing the rivets on the boiler and the heavy casting of the wheels. "Built to last. Built for a journey."
But as he moved through the crowd, his fascination was dampened by a familiar chill. The chatter of parents and students died down as he passed. A father dropped his trunk with a heavy thud, his face turning the color of old parchment. A mother pulled her daughter behind her robes, her eyes wide with a terror that bordered on the physical.
Andrew sighed, a weary, rhythmic sound. He didn't look at them. He kept his head high, his handsome face set in a mask of calm, polite dignity. I am a smith, he reminded himself. I am the maker, not the shadow.
He boarded the train and found an empty compartment at the very end. Once the door clicked shut, he pulled the history book from his satchel. He turned to the page with the boy who shared his face. He scanned every line of text, his finger tracing the ink.
"Voldemort," he murmured. "The Dark Lord. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."
His brow furrowed in frustration. "But who was he? People aren't born as 'Lords.' They are forged." He closed the book with a snap. Ollivander had known the name—Tom Riddle—but the history books had scrubbed it from existence, as if the name itself were a curse. Andrew leaned his head against the cool glass of the window, wondering if his own hidden surname was a piece of this puzzle.
The compartment door slid open.
A thin boy with messy black hair and broken glasses stood there, looking exhausted. Behind him was a lanky, red-headed boy with a smudge of dirt on his nose.
"Er—sorry," the dark-haired boy said. "Everywhere else is full. Do you mind?"
"Not at all," Andrew said, his voice instantly shifting back into that warm, charismatic melody. He stood up, offering a hand with the poise of a young gentleman. "I'm Andrew. Please, sit. I was just catching up on some... rather dramatic reading."
The black-haired boy took his hand, looking a bit surprised by the warmth. "I'm Harry. Harry Potter."
Andrew didn't gasp. He didn't stare at the scar. He simply smiled, a bright, genuine expression that made Harry's shoulders relax for the first time all day. "A pleasure, Harry. And you?"
"Ron Weasley," the redhead said, plonking himself down and looking at Andrew with wide eyes. "Blimey... you look a bit like... well, you're very posh-looking, aren't you?"
Andrew laughed, a light, musical sound. "I've been told I have a 'complicated' face, Ron. But I promise I'm much more interested in blacksmithing and Tolkien than being posh."
Harry looked at the thick history book on the seat. "Is that about the Wizarding World? I'm new to all this. I didn't even know I was a wizard until a month ago."
"Neither did I," Andrew said, leaning forward, his charisma weaving a bond between them instantly. "I grew up in an orphanage. I thought my 'magic' was just a knack for fixing things at the forge. It seems we're all starting from the beginning, Harry. A fellowship of sorts, wouldn't you say?"
As the train began to chug out of the station, Andrew watched the two boys. He saw the loneliness in Harry's eyes and the nervous energy in Ron's. He felt a sudden, protective surge in his chest—the instinct of a builder to protect the foundation. He wouldn't let the "Shadow" in the book touch these two. Not while he held the hammer.