Chapter Text
In the land of Hogwarts, it is no surprise that heroes must save the princess by slaying the dragon. It is their destiny, and they must live it. Most of the time it works. Brave heroes with the golden finger of Luck (instead of the middle finger most people get) can achieve extraordinary success through extraordinarily illogical sequences of events.
The Hero who wants a princess no matter that he’s had a village sweetheart waiting for him; the King who offers the throne to a village bum to save his daughter, thinking he would never be the Hero; the Fairy who gives the Hero a magical sword and an impervious shield; the Dragon who for all its cunning and cruelty trips over its tail and is slayed by the mighty Hero; and the Princess who falls in love at first sight with just about the ugliest man she ever set her eyes upon.
Nobody questions these things. Well, nobody of note that is.
And so it went on, with every epoch came more Heroes, more Princesses and more Dragons. Until one day when Madame La Chance, the Minister of the Hogwarts Department of Heroic Idiocy, descended onto the land of Hogwarts and arrived at the door of an orphanage. She was to appoint a new babe as the next Hero of the Epoch, and very determined she was, until she chanced upon two very attractive young men in the inn next door. She was in the middle of a ménage à trois with Mr Dumbledore and Mr Grindelwald on the second floor of the inn when she flung her wand out of the window.
At that very moment, one Merope Gaunt had arrived outside the orphanage, collapsing from starvation and gravid with the babe she hoped to save. Madame La Chance’s wand, Dogwood, 12 and a quarter inches, so springy and swishy it could spiral like a mosquito coil, did a remarkable spin in the air before aiming and shooting silver sparks dead centre at Merope’s womb.
Her womb fairly glowed, and Merope found herself promptly going into labour. It was this very scene that Mrs Cole of the orphanage happened to see. In no more than a second, the streets were filled with nosy villagers, all clamouring about to witness the mark of the new Hero. They ooh-ed and ahh-ed with much gusto. How fortunate that Little Hangleton would be blessed with one this Epoch!
It was within this crush of bodies that Mrs Cole, finally coming to her senses, helped Merope to deliver the babe whose name Tom Marvolo Riddle was whispered on his mother’s last breath.
Madame La Chance whose squeals and moans were no longer ringing in her own ears peered out of the inn’s window with an undone bodice.
“Oh dear,” she said, when she realised what had happened. It seemed the village orphan Billy Stubbs who was to be born the next day would never get to be Hero. She pondered her strategy for a moment. And as most politicians would tell you, there were only three ways to solve a problem that was very much created by themselves:
1) Pretend they were not responsible for it and/or find a scapegoat
2) Use someone or something else as a diversion for the time-being
3) Create even more disasters so no one knew how to react and would certainly not remember the first problem by the end of it all
Madame La Chance decided to do all three. She sent a Patronus out and upwards to the Ministry in the Sky, claiming to have met a most notorious and evil wizard, Grindelwald, whom she had been unhappily deceived by. She then turned one Mr Dumbledore into a dragon whom she still found rather attractive. Lastly, she proceeded to mess up the allocation of every other key character of the Epic Hero Story of this Epoch, not least including Tom Marvolo Riddle as the new Hero and Albus Dumbledore as the Dragon. What an epic battle they would have!
Pleased, she left Little Hangleton and the land of Hogwarts a lot worse for wear.
It was the 31st of December. She had a year-end bonus to collect.