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Tom Riddle hated Wool’s Orphanage most when it was quiet.
Noise at least disguised the place. Blurred the smell of boiled cabbage, damp wood and the ever-present stench of too many children packed into too little space. Shouting, crying, the scrape of chairs on warped floorboards. All of it merged into something almost tolerable.
Silence, though, stripped the place bare. It left him alone within the walls. Their peeling paint, their watchfulness, their memories of him. They had seen him smaller, weaker, less careful. Vulnerable. They remembered every transgression, real or imagined.
So did the people.
He had been back from Hogwarts for barely a week, and already the building seemed to resent him for returning at all. As though his absence had been a relief, a presumption. Mrs. Cole’s eyes lingered on him longer than necessary, sharp with questions she never asked aloud. The other children watched from corners and doorways, whispering in tones that dropped the moment he passed.
They had not forgotten.
Hogwarts was supposed to be different.
Tom had believed that with the kind of conviction reserved for people who had nothing else. Nothing to lose. The castle had risen out of the fog like a promise, ancient and immense, its stones humming faintly with magic older than any name he had ever been given. For a time, longer than he would ever admit, he thought he had finally arrived somewhere that made sense.
Magic came to him easily. Too easily.
Spells responded as though recognizing him, eager, almost relieved. Incantations settled into place without struggle. Wandwork felt intuitive, precise. Professors paused over his work, their attention lingering in ways that made other students bristle. Some praised him openly. Others watched him with narrowed consideration, as though trying to determine where, exactly, he had learned to be like this.
But children noticed different things.
In Slytherin House, lineage was currency. Names carried weight long before the people attached to them had done anything of merit. Boys spoke casually of ancestral manors and family vaults, of expectations set generations before they were born. They compared bloodlines the way Muggles compared coin, careless and cruel in their certainty that they were wealthy beyond measure.
Tom listened.
Tom remembered.
He learned which families sneered at which others, which grudges were older than the school itself. He memorized surnames, traced alliances, noted whose opinions mattered, and whose were merely loud. Knowledge was protection. Knowledge was leverage.
And when they asked him, inevitably, he had nothing substantial to give them.
No stories. No heraldry. No ancestral home hidden behind wards and generations of portraits. Just Wool’s Orphanage, which sounded as grim as it was, and which silenced rooms far more effectively than any shouted insult ever could.
They did not shout at him. Never. They did not need to.
Their politeness was sharper.
Questions asked a moment too late, so he could not quite join the conversation. Smiles that lingered a second too long, assessing. A few of them tried him outright, slipping words like mudblood into careless laughter, watching closely for a reaction. Others simply dismissed him, treating his success as an anomaly that would surely correct itself in time.
He never reacted.
Reaction was weakness. Reaction was something others could use. Instead, Tom smiled when insulted, spoke carefully, excelled relentlessly. He let them hate him quietly while he catalogued their flaws with surgical precision.
That, more than anything, unsettled them.
It reminded him unpleasantly of Wool’s.
There, fear had always been louder. The other children had recoiled openly once they learned enough to be afraid. The adults had watched him the way one watched a crack in the wall. Warily, waiting for it to spread. Discipline had followed curiosity, and watchfulness had followed discipline.
Different words. Same shape and meaning.
Contain. Observe. Control.
Tom folded his thin jacket over his arm with deliberate neatness, smoothing the worn fabric as though it were fine wool. He did not allow himself to resent Hogwarts. Resentment was indulgent. The castle had given him knowledge, power, proof that he was not what Wool’s had tried to make of him.
But it had also taught him something colder.
Belonging was never given freely.
Temporary, Tom told himself. Everything about Wool’s was temporary. He would endure it as he endured everything else. By outlasting it.
That was why he left, as the last rays of dawn spilled across the sky.
The front door shut behind him with a dull thud that felt like finality. And for a moment he simply stood there, breathing in the open air as though it might cleanse him. London stretched out before him, sprawling and indifferent, its streets slick with recent rain. Coal smoke hung low, mixing with the metallic tang of the river Thames and the sharp scent of stone.
No one watched him here.
Or if they did, they did not care.
Tom walked.
Not quickly. Not aimlessly. He chose his direction with quiet intention at first, heading away from the familiar streets near the orphanage, letting the buildings change around him. Rows of cramped brick gave way to wider roads, cleaner shopfronts, windows glowing warmly against the dusk. The sounds shifted too. Fewer shouting children, more measured footsteps, voices pitched lower, confident.
He took it all in automatically.
He noted the cadence of footsteps behind him and the way they fell back when he slowed. He noted reflections in shop windows, the thinness of his frame, the way his posture had changed since Hogwarts. Straighter, more deliberate. He noted how couples leaned into one another without thinking, hands brushing, shoulders touching.
At Hogwarts, affection was strategic.
At Wool’s, it was rationed.
Here, it seemed… as if effortless.
That, more than anything, irritated him.
The walk stretched on. Streets blended together. Tom stopped paying attention to where he was going and focused instead on the steady rhythm of movement, on the way the tension in his shoulders eased incrementally with every block that put distance between him and Wool’s.
He did not know how long he had been walking when the sensation struck.
That sudden, visceral wrongness. Like stepping too close to a precipice you hadn’t seen. Hadn’t expected. Like realizing you were being watched a moment too late.
Tom slowed his pace.
Then stopped.
Across the street, a man was laughing.
It was not the sound that caught Tom’s attention. It was the face.
Same wavy dark hair, neatly combed. Same bone structure. Sharp cheekbones, straight nose. Same mouth, curved in a way Tom had only ever seen in his own reflection. The man stood tall, well-dressed, one gloved hand resting casually at his side, posture easy with confidence Tom had never been allowed to develop.
Tom’s heart did not race.
It sank, heavy and deliberate, as though recognizing gravity for the first time.
Beside the man stood a delicate featured woman, her arm looped through his with unconscious familiarity. She was smiling up at him, warm and unguarded. And between them-
A child.
A little boy, looking no older than five, clutching the man’s hand with careless trust. He had the same dark hair. The same eyes. Softer, rounder for now, but unmistakable.
Tom felt something twist sharply in his chest.
No one had ever looked at him the way that child was being looked at.
The man bent slightly, murmuring something low and private, brushing imaginary dirt from the boy’s sleeve and shoulder with a tenderness so practiced it had clearly never been questioned. Never had to be earned. The woman laughed, light and genuine. The boy grinned.
They looked like a family.
A real, ideal family.
Tom crossed the street without thinking.
He followed them at a careful distance, every sense sharpened, his mind racing with possibilities. Coincidence, he told himself. A cruel one, perhaps, but nothing more. London was full of well-off dark-haired men. Full of families who did not belong to him.
And yet-
His reflection slid into a shop window as he passed, superimposed over fine fabrics and polished glass. For a fleeting, treacherous moment, it felt as though the youth in the glass was not him as he was, but as he should have been. Clean coat. Steady hand. A place already carved out in the world.
Anger flared, sudden and hot.
The man glanced back.
Their eyes met.
For half a second, the world seemed to stutter.
The man froze.
Tom saw it then. Clear as the fear that flickered in bullies’ eyes before they learned discretion. The man’s expression tightened, his smile faltering just a fraction. His grip on the child’s hand sharpened.
Recognition.
Not delight.
Not wonder.
Not even indifference.
Fear.
The woman followed his gaze, brow creasing slightly. “Thomas?” She asked.
The man- Thomas- looked away too quickly. “Nothing Cecilia.” He said. His voice was clipped now, controlled. “Come along.”
Tom stopped walking.
He stood there, heart steady, watching them retreat. The child glanced back once, curious and unafraid.
Tom stared at the man’s back and understood something with cold, dreadful clarity.
You know what I am.
And whatever that knowledge was, it sickened you.
Tom smiled, slow and deliberate.
“Oh.” He murmured to the empty street, voice barely more than a thought.
“I think you owe me an explanation.”
And he would have it.
________________________________________________
Tom did not follow them immediately.
That would have been crude. Obvious. Beneath him.
Instead, he waited until the man- the one the woman had called Thomas- guided his family down the street and out of sight. Tom stood very still, letting the moment replay itself in his mind, over and over. The way the man’s smile had fractured when their eyes met, the reflexive tightening of his grip on the child’s hand. Fear, certainly, but not confusion.
The fear of something long buried being disturbed.
Tom began walking again.
He followed at a distance that required attention rather than speed. He let other pedestrians pass between them, adjusted his stride so it never aligned too closely with theirs. His eyes flicked from reflection to reflection, cataloguing angles, posture, gait. The man walked like someone accustomed to being unquestioned. His shoulders were set with unconscious authority. His head remained upright even when he leaned down to listen to the little boy.
Tom found himself mirroring the movement without realizing it.
They turned onto a quieter street. Fewer people. Wider spaces between houses. The air smelled cleaner here, faintly floral, the residue of a life Tom had never touched.
The woman, Cecilia, stopped at a gate, fumbling in her bag. The boy knelt, intent on something glittering in a crack in the pavement. The man hovered, glancing around with a vigilance that had not been present before.
Tom crossed the street.
He stopped a few feet away. Not close enough to invite instinctive hostility, not far enough to be ignored. He let himself simply exist in the man’s peripheral vision.
The reaction was immediate.
The man stiffened, turning with the reflexive speed of someone who sensed danger before he consciously identified it. He shifted his body subtly, placing himself between Tom and the woman without fully committing to the gesture. As though he feared drawing attention to it.
“Yes?” He asked.
The word was polite. The tension beneath it was not.
Up close, the resemblance was worse. It was not just similarity. It was continuity. Tom felt it like a pressure behind his eyes. Same mouth, same eyes, the same slight asymmetry in the brow. The differences only sharpened the effect. The man’s face was relaxed in ways Tom’s had never been allowed to be.
“You saw me.” Tom stated.
It was not a question, by any means.
The man’s jaw tightened, the muscle jumping once before he mastered it. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Behind him, the woman frowned. “Thomas?”
The man did not look at her. “Go inside.” He said quickly. Too quickly. “I’ll be there in a moment.”
She hesitated, glancing at Tom again. Her gaze lingered, curious rather than alarmed, as though trying to place him in a social category that did not quite fit. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes.” Thomas said, his eyes never leaving Tom’s face. His facial features. “Of course.”
The boy straightened, peering around his father’s leg. “Daddy?”
The word struck Tom with unexpected force. Not because of longing, but because of certainty. That was what the man was here. That role had been claimed.
The man flinched.
Tom watched it happen. Watched the word land, watched the involuntary tightening of shoulders, the flicker of panic quickly buried beneath composure.
“That’s all right.” Tom said calmly, lowering his voice by a fraction. “I won’t keep him for long.”
The phrasing was deliberate. He saw the man react to it, saw the way his grip on the situation tightened.
The woman allowed herself to be ushered toward the door, unease finally beginning to outweigh curiosity. The boy looked back once, openly interested, unafraid, before disappearing inside.
The door shut.
The sound felt final.
Thomas exhaled slowly, like a man steadying himself before an unpleasant task. “Who are you?” He asked.
Tom took a moment before answering. Not because he hesitated, but because he wanted to see what the man would do with the silence.
“Tom.” He said. “Tom Riddle.”
The effect was immediate.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
Thomas’s face drained of color, the transformation subtle but unmistakable. His eyes flicked toward the door. Checking, assessing. Before returning to Tom with sharpened focus.
“That is not amusing.” He said.
“I’m not joking.”
“You must be mistaken.” Thomas replied, smoothing his tone into something reasonable, dismissive. “That name-”
“-is yours.” Tom said, quietly.
They stood facing one another, the resemblance between them now impossible to ignore. Tom watched as the man struggled to reconcile the impossible with the undeniable.
Thomas laughed once, harshly. It sounded forced. “This is absurd.”
“Is it?” Tom asked. “You recognized me before I spoke.”
“That proves nothing.”
“It proves enough.”
Thomas’s gaze hardened, irritation rising to cover something more fragile beneath. “Where did you hear that name?”
Tom frowned faintly. “I didn’t. It’s mine.”
The pause that followed was infinitesimal, but it carried weight.
“And your mother?” Thomas asked, carefully.
Too carefully, as if dreading a certain possible conclusion.
Tom noticed the way his posture shifted as he asked it, the way his breath stilled, as though bracing for an impact.
“She passed away.” Tom said. “Shortly after I was born.”
Relief crossed the man’s face before he could stop it.
It was sharp. Undeniable.
And then came something else. Revulsion, folding quickly over the relief like a reflexive attempt to hide it.
Tom felt understanding begin to assemble itself, cold and methodical.
“I see.” Thomas said.
“No.” Tom replied. “I don’t think you do.”
Thomas’s mouth tightened. “You can’t simply appear and-”
“You didn’t look surprised that I exist.” Tom interrupted. “Only that I found you.”
Thomas opened his mouth, then closed it again. His gaze dropped. Not in guilt, but in avoidance.
Tom tilted his head, studying him as one might study a puzzle finally yielding its shape. “You didn’t know about me personally.” He said slowly. “But you knew she was pregnant.”
“I-”
“You didn’t stay because you wanted to.” He said slowly. “Something made you stay.”
Thomas’s eyes flicked away. His hand flexed at his side.
Tom’s chest tightened. Not from anger, but from recognition. “You didn’t care for her. About her condition.” He said quietly. “Not really. And that’s why you left.”
“That’s enough.” Thomas snapped. “You don’t know anything about-”
“I know you see me.” Tom said, stepping closer. “And what I am as the proof that something was taken from you. Something that was never yours to lose, yet you lost it anyway.”
Thomas recoiled.
He tried to hide it. He failed.
Disgust flickered across his face. Not at Tom as a person, but at Tom as a consequence. As a reminder. As living evidence of something taken.
Tom absorbed it in silence. The faint curl of the lip, the tensing in his jaw, the glint of shame.
“So that’s it.” He murmured. “I’m not just a mistake. I’m evidence.”
The man’s breathing had gone shallow now, his composure visibly fraying. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Why?”
“Because this isn’t normal.”
Tom smiled faintly. “No.” He agreed. “It isn’t.”
From inside the house came muted sounds. Movement, a voice, the ordinary continuity of a life untouched by this moment.
“I won’t tell them.” Tom said at last. “Your wife... Your little son.”
Thomas’s head snapped up. “What do you want?”
The question was stripped bare.
Tom considered it, truly considered it.
“I wanted to know why you left.” He answered.
“And now?”
Tom met his eyes fully.
“Now I know you didn’t choose to stay.” He let the rest go unspoken- even for me.
He stepped back, control settling over him again like armor reassembled piece by piece.
“Goodbye.” Tom said, while an afterthought came to him.
The man better hope they never cross paths again.
He turned and walked away.
Behind him, the door opened.
“Thomas?” Cecilia's questioning voice echoed in the silence.
Thomas did not answer right away.
Tom did not look back.
________________________________________________
It was cold.
Tom felt before he saw. The chill of the rough stone wall next to him, the brittle bite of air that stung through the thin stinging blankets he was wrapped into, the faint metallic tang that clung to everything like filth unwashable.
He felt tiny. Was tiny. Smaller than he remembered, smaller than anyone could be and still feel. The world tilted and swayed, and yet, somehow, he could see everything.
Her hands, frail and trembling, hovered above him, then settled against his skin despite the winter air, soft and desperate. Callused fingers brushing against the nape of his neck, tracing the line of his shoulder, holding him as though holding on to a moment slipping by.
Her face was pale, almost gray, the lines in her skin deepened by fear and deep exhaustion. Eyes like storm-dark water, rimmed with fatigue, watching him as if he were the most precious, fragile thing she had ever known. And perhaps he was.
“You’re so small.” She whispered, voice barely more than a breath. “So… perfect.”
He felt her pulse, rapid and uneven, echoing against his cheek. Felt the tremor in her weakened arms as she held him. Felt her chest rise and fall, uneven and tight, with breaths that came too quickly, too shallow.
There was fear there. Pure, sharp, almost tangible. Fear for herself, for him, for what had been done and what was yet to come. Fear for a world that would not care, would not understand. And beneath it, an incorrigible sorrow that curled around him, quiet and consuming.
Tom’s tiny fists brushed against her collarbone. He could feel the receding heat of her skin, the weight of her desperation. Her eyes found his, searching, pleading, full of regret for things he could not name.
“I’m sorry.” She whispered, and it carried the weight of a thousand untold confessions. “I… I tried.”
And then the world tilted again. The cold air pressed closer, sharper, heavier. Her hands faltered. Her breath came in small, uneven gasps, and her gaze, once so intent on him, now flickered outward, distant and lost.
Tom felt the icy chill before the loss. Felt the inevitability, the rapid unwinding of warmth and life. Her touch lingered a moment longer, trembling, and then it was gone.
A shadow passed across his vision, and he sensed the absence before he understood it. Her blue lips, her glazed eyes, her pulse- fading.
And still he remained. Watching the now corpse. Feeling the cool flesh. Remembering the moment for what is was.
He did not cry.
He could not.
But he understood already.
The world was cold. The world was cruel. And yet, he was left.
Left with everything she could not keep.
Left with the weight of knowing, even before he had a name, that love could fail.
That power could be taken.
That absence could be eternal.
The memory vanished from his mind like fog, as the first pale ray of dawn touched the earth.
A New day was upon.