The smile on Ron's face froze instantly.
Malfoy, seated across the aisle, watched the two of them make a spectacle of themselves and thought to himself.
Riddle was beyond his reach. These two Gryffindor idiots, on the other hand, were much more suitable opponents.
Malfoy had behaved himself quite a bit these past few days. He had stopped provoking Tom and focused instead on pondering Lucius's teachings, which boiled down to one sentence.
Only squeeze the soft persimmons, cling tightly to powerful thighs, and grab whatever benefits you could.
He could not manage the latter two for now, but he carried out the first perfectly.
He shot Ron a mocking glance. "Weasley, if you can't fix it, you'll have to pay for it. Is that little allowance of yours enough?"
Ron's face turned bright red. Harry immediately stepped forward to defend his friend, and the two of them began arguing fiercely with Malfoy, neither willing to give an inch.
Now that was what evenly matched opponents looked like.
Tom did not notice any of this. He was thinking about the limits of the Mending Charm. Cups could be repaired, plates could be repaired, tables could be repaired, walls could be repaired. What about wands? Could a broken wand be repaired?
He recalled the plot from the original story. When Harry's wand broke, Hermione had said, "There's no way to fix it. You can only get a new one."
Yet later, Harry had used the Elder Wand to repair his own wand.
That meant the limit was not wands themselves, but the limits of an ordinary Mending Charm. The Elder Wand could do it, while ordinary wands could not.
Then what about his purpleheart wand? If it broke, who would repair it for him? Albus Dumbledore? Snape? Or himself?
"Mr. Riddle."