Tzolk'in 819 - Lady Owl

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Chapter 1

The stars reached down and ripped the Earth apart. There was fire – frigid after my skin evaporated – and the shrieking of the wind – silence after the initial sonic boom burst my eardrums. I saw the red of Voldemort's eyes. Then, I died.

Some physiological weakness of development prevents me from recalling exactly what follows. My next coherent memories are freezing cold water, hard brushes, giants shoving my head in the toilet, the endless droning of liturgical memorization, jeers, mocking, and caning.

At some point, I realized that I was in an orphanage. My body was young – maybe two, three years old. My fingers were imprecise, and I couldn't reach the lavatory mirror to see my appearance. I was called 'Eight'; Matron was a great believer in efficiency.

For the staff, we cleaned our rooms, shined our boots, walked in columns and stayed quiet unless we were reciting prayer. For the older boys, I sacrificed my Sunday cake, kept silent as they stole and threatened one another, and bowed my head to prevent being noticed.

We had an understanding. None of us had enough, yet the only place to get what we wanted was off each other. Successful theft or defense was quietly approved. Getting caught got one a literal knife in the side. If we ratted to the staff, the other boys would beat us black-and-shunned. If the staff beat us, at least our friends would sneak us what bread-and-margarine they could.

True, it was harsh. But I could live with harsh. The Dursleys had been harsh. The hopeless war against Voldemort had been harsh. Life as Eight in House Three of Wool's Orphanage was at least normal. I was one-of-the-boys. My trousers were as patched as any around me. I ate as much as any of the other boys. There was no great destiny on my shoulders. So the physical harshness brought mental relief.

I played by the rules: said Ma'am and Sir, please and thank you, and Amen before eating. I played by the rules: I stole, lied, threatened, laughed, and wrestled. I hid my stolen treasures in a little box in my wardrobe – just as I knew that Five did. When Twelve bullied me out of supper five nights in a row until I hung his pet rabbit, Seven quietly ruffled my hair.

It was fantastic.

Until the day that I was old enough for lessons, and Mr. Gibbons addressed me as "Thomas Riddle." Then I panicked. The lavatory mirror showed the same reflection it always did: pale skin, dark hair, brown eyes, no scar. I had never worried about it before. Yet, was I now Voldemort? Was I destined to become Voldemort? Was all the pain and suffering that I had hated as Harry Potter now to be self-inflicted? Had I always been Voldemort?

Two came into the lavatory as I was huddled in the corner. He was the oldest of us House Three boys. He looked me over as he was brushing his teeth, then sighed. He told me that I had the look that came from a trip outside the orphanage, when outside girls turned up their noses, outside boys called us 'bastards' and shopkeepers closed their doors in our faces. He told me not to mind them; that there was nothing wrong with me other than being brave and tough; that I wasn't bad now, and wouldn't grow up to be bad unless I made myself that way. Then, he finished cleaning his toothbrush, told me to get over it, and shoved me out of the loo.

So, I went back to the lesson. I took my caning for having fled, and proceeded to pretend to learn the 3R's at the same pace as the other boys. In hindsight, I don't think I pretended all that well: when I left Wool's for my first year at Hogwarts, Gibbons gave me a little black notebook impressed with the initials T. M. Riddle, and told me to stop borrowing his Dickens.

I was offered my place at Hogwarts by Albus Dumbledore himself. In all honesty, I reacted badly to seeing him again. My mentor – my manipulator. The man who gave his life for me. The man who pushed me to suicide in the woods. The man who wanted me to have a happy childhood. The man who intentionally kept secrets that could have saved the lives of my friends and family.

My pain made me weak. I wanted him to hurt – to feel the abandonment I had felt at his hands. I called Hogwarts an asylum. I warned him that people had hurt me, and that I had had to hurt them back to protect myself. I knew my mistake almost as soon as I'd made it; I should have chosen my words more carefully. This Dumbledore had no reason to love me – no reason to protect me until I could complete my prophesied purpose. He only saw a thief, a violent thief, without the context.

When I sat under the sorting hat – wanting very badly not to become Voldemort – the hat sorted me to Slytherin for my ambition.

In class, I kept quiet unless called upon, when I always had the correct answers. My spells worked on their first try – I had been using them since Harry Potter had started at Hogwarts what would be 53 years into the future. I developed a reputation as having an instinctive feel for magic. I was polite, courteous, and helpful to those students who asked me for help. No-one asked the muggleborn Slytherin for friendship.

I caused tension in Slytherin house. It first showed in small pains: little pushes when walking down the hallways, sneers and rude words, and ink spilled on homework. As soon as the jinxes began, the tension escalated. I could shield better than any seventh year could curse, and it showed. My year-mates began to ask older and older housemates to curse me in their place, with no improved success. When I – an apparent second year, who had spent 22 years in magical combat against a Dark Lord and 11 years scrapping physically against the toughest boys in London – defeated the best of the seventh years in a common room duel, I knew something had to be done.

Further escalation could become truly dangerous to all involved. They might harm me in my sleep and I would be forced to retaliate. If I didn't back up my implied threat, I would be dead within the year. So, I did what I could to pull myself completely out of their league: I turned to the snakes carved and embroidered in the house furniture, and I hissed. The snakes on the couches, wall-sconces, and tables answered back.

I petted the top of the nearest snake's head, and played it cool. I told them that I was the last child of the house of Gaunt, heir primogenitor of the line of Slytherin. They asked why I had pretended to be muggleborn, and I laughed that I had wanted to prove that I was best before sharing my heritage. They said that they understood. How reassuring...

It was a few years later that I found several of the first years – presumably egged on by the clique's leader, Rufinus Lestrange – playing word games with my name. They seemed to have fixated on the idea that their leader should have a true Slytherin name. I, assuming they would return with something like Manlius Gaunt, stupidy let them.

It was part-ways through my first year at Hogwarts that I began to wonder how Voldemort had killed me. I spent most of my time – unburdened as it was with classwork, athletics, or friends – hunting through the library. I never, in the end, found a spell to cause such a large explosion. I did not die purely from fire – Voldemort's curse was not some variation of the dreaded Fiendfire – nor from some pure bombardment. The explosion had come from beneath my feet, as though the Earth had ripped itself apart.

I wondered faintly whether Voldemort had survived the blast himself. I could not imagine so. In fact, I had this odd certainty that the explosion had literally destroyed the Earth; it had blown the planet into space dust, destroying everything on it. Obviously, I couldn't prove this.

Even leaving aside the question of why Voldemort would wish to destroy that which he wanted to rule, I never found a spell that could accomplish such a feat. I turned towards the books that discussed ritual, and natural philosophy, and legend. In these, I found vague traces of an unspeakable horror that early magicians had averted. There was never anything more explicit than rare words that might reference an Apocalypse, extreme sacrifice, World-Snake, Atlantis, or destruction.

I worried that I had died at the end of the world, and I wondered whether it would be possible to prevent it.

In my second-second year, I descended to the Chamber of Secrets, and found Slytherin's personal library. As years passed, without an explanation, I hunted through the books and scrolls in the Room of Hidden Things, and Slytherin's library. When I had searched all of the books, I thought to question the Basilisk.

It was a mistake – a stupid, dangerous, foolish oversight – that left the Basilisk's path open in May of my fifth year. The Basilisk crawled upwards and exited the bathroom. I yelled for it to stop and return, but I was too slow. The Ravenclaw girl was dead. I commanded the Basilisk to return to the Chamber, and not to leave until it was explicitly, verbally released.

I hid myself and fought with questions of pre-destination and moral choice.

That summer, waiting in the countryside where Wool's orphanage had been evacuated, I made a decision. Myrtle was already dead. If I had already paid the price of a horcrux, maybe I ought to carry it out of the store. After all, if I died, in the Blitz, no-one would know that the Apocalypse was truly coming. No-one, other than I, was looking for a way to avoid it.

So, the following Autumn, I broke my already-shattered soul, and stored a fragment inside Gibbon's diary. I gave the horcrux what little knowledge I had: that the world would end in a bang on Samhain of 2013, and that I had not yet finished asking the Basilisk what it knew.

Proud to be an orphan: How an orphanage where cold showers and sadistic beatings became home (Peter Paterson, Daily Mail Online, 12 February 2011)