Edit 30/7/2015: This was originally Dante's idea and Dante's project. However, she has apparently decided to abandon it for various reasons, the validity of which I won't comment on. I'll be (hopefully) finishing it for her, but since neither the idea nor project truly belong to me, I won't be rewriting this chapter to better match the style of the rest of the work.
This chapter can now be considered a prelude/prologue. The rest of the work will read more like a continuous, flowing story, that is, it won't consist of short snapshots of Tom's life. In terms of writing style, it will be similar to that of the first section below, titled "anathema," since I was the one who wrote that section.
About 20% or so of the next chapter, Part I, has been written and it should be up within a week.
~Kodos
Prelude
anathema: a person or thing accursed or consigned to damnation or destruction.
The orphanage; Tom, aged four
He was, apparently, privileged to be in an orphanage and not out in the streets stealing bread and being a general menace to society.
Of course, the idea was always far from the reality.
The children pushed him and ignored him. For some reason, none of them liked him at all, even though he was certainly better-looking and smarter than that Amy girl, whom everyone flocked around and admired.
Not even the adults wanted him here. Four years old was a good age for adoption, better than five or six anyway. That's what careful observation had told him. But every day, he was passed over by scrutinizing eyes as he stood there in a line with the other children like a slave to be bought. The occasional doting mother looking for a little boy to smother with affection would approach him and pinch his cheeks but inevitably leave with a bubblier, happier charge, someone who everyone at the orphanage loved.
He had tried, before, to put on that façade, and he knew he was a good actor, but yet again, the adults fawned over him and then left with someone else.
No one wanted him.
hiraeth: a homesickness for a home you cannot return to, or that never was
The orphanage; Tom, aged six
Tom irritably flicked through the book of fairy tales he had nicked from the library. He scoffed at the stories and their happily-ever-after endings with the scorn of one who desperately and secretly wanted.
And so he flipped through the stories and snorted in derision and his heart ached with an emotion he refused to acknowledge. It was all lies anyway; there were never happy endings for the little orphan boys.
He slashed at another page, turning it roughly; he heard the paper tear. A rare flash of shame forced him to inspect the rip.
His eye caught the line of text next to the tear.
"He rose out of the cave like a phoenix out of ashes…"
"Phoenix," he sounded out. It was a pretty word, he supposed. But it was from the stupid book of lies. Even more irritating was the fact that he didn't actually know what a phoenix was. Oh, it couldn't be important. Just a stupid word from a stupid story…
inferno: a large fire that is dangerously out of control; hell
The orphanage; Tom, aged eight
During the Blitz
Shouts rang out in the night as another bomb fell screaming down to London. The sky glowed a sickly orange like an image from hell. Tom stared out at the fires consuming the city with no emotion in his silver gaze though fear gnawed at his heart.
He was standing barefoot on the cold grey pavement outside the orphanage - a forced exile born of cruelty and superstition from his fellow orphans; endorsed by the orphanage staff.
Keep the freak outside, and maybe God will spare us. Leave the freak outside, and there will be no reason for the bomb to hit us.
His fists clenched as another bomb fell, terrifyingly close. A house a few blocks away burst into flames.
Tom watched the fire, unblinking, until when he closed his eyes, sparks danced in the darkness in front of him. A scream echoed from down the street. His eyes shot open but the image was blurry. Blurred light, all light, just light. Wasn't light supposed to be good? In the stories?
He dashed his hand across his eyes, shook himself, and bolted. The fire was spreading towards where he was; old, run-down homes catching as easily as if they had been soaked in kerosene.
A hand grabbed at his arm. He whirled, his heart leaping into his mouth.
It was an old woman, one of the residents of the neighborhood.
"London will rise!" She screamed, her dark eyes desperate and crazed in the light of the flames burning up the night. "It will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of its people!"
Tom shook her hand off and sprinted away. The image was burned into his memory. Dark, frizzy hair like a halo and desperate eyes, light by the sickly light of fire.
That word again, phoenix, that word that reminded him of a time before the war, a time when there had been time to scorn things like fairy tales.
ineffable: too great to be expressed in words
The abandoned ruins of the library, one month later
Later that month, when he found himself hiding from the rain and the fire in the abandoned, half-destroyed library, he found a book. It was large, old, and bound with crinkled leather - a book of fairytales, if the fantastical illustrations inside it were any indication. But the stories looked nothing like the colorful, fanciful daydreams the other children at the orphanage had. These were drawings of the horrors of even the most idealized world, a world where mermaids turned to human turned to sea foam, where men were enslaved and executed by their own shadows.
And on the cover, engraved with a steady, careful hand, was a majestic bird in flight.
He traced the image of the phoenix with a finger that was shaking from the cold. The bird was indescribably great, awe-inspiring. It was proud, unshakable, a powerful entity deserving of respect. Everything he wished he himself was.
Oh, to be a phoenix, he thought. To fly (I always wanted to be airborne, but they never let me on the swings)... For fire to be a home and not something to be feared… To be immortal and never fear death - I wish I were a phoenix.
fey: doomed, fated to die
The streets of London; a week later
Tom was curled up on the sidewalk against the wall of an abandoned store, shivers from hunger and cold wracking his small frame.
The bombs were falling again, like great big lumps of rain, his fevered brain supplied. They screamed as they tore through the air, in a beautiful harmony with the people standing on the ground to meet them at the end of their fall.
Then there was one heading towards him, heavy and dark and eclipsing the sickly sun, and why does it want me, none of them ever did, and he was just so tired that he couldn't even be afraid and maybe it'll play with me and for once I won't be alone. Maybe I'll be like a phoenix and fire will become home - the beginning and end of all things- and there'll be no more cold and I will never have to worry again... But his subconscious sent up a last, powerful effort, a desperate desire to live, and for a split second he wanted to be away from there and so he was.
And with that effort his eyes slipped shut and he surrendered.
When he opened his eyes again, it was quite clear that he was no longer in London; rather, he was sitting alone in a bleak rain-washed meadow. For a brief moment he entertained the thought he was in heaven; however, he had always been told he would end up in hell and his surroundings were altogether too nice to be hell. He was still hungry and sore, but he wasn't dead. He couldn't even bring himself to be relieved.
"Why?" he whispered. I was ready to die.
And then he realized that he had teleported and that oh, the other children were right, and I really am a freak after all.
And crystal drop gleamed in the dull sunlight as it washed the soot and grime off his cheek and he pulled his legs in and hugged them to his chest.
The sharp trill of a bird startled him and he raised his head. The sun had slunk closer to the horizon and a brisk breeze was tugging at his tattered shirt and raising goosebumps on his dust-stained arms.
He watched a bird leap out of a sapling in a flurry of leaves and feathers. Its wings gleamed dully in the light.
"Phoenix." he whispered. But that wasn't right; this bird had never known the heat, the fear, the power of fire.
He pitied it.
Fire was terrible, and yet, it was great…
epoch: a particular period of time in history or in a person's life
The meadow; Tom, aged 9
He lived there- uncounted weeks of living in peace off river-water and grass. But he wanted to be special, to be great, and if he wanted that, he could not spend his whole life alone in a meadow.
And one night the horizon wasn't lit up orange with the fires of london, and so he knew it was time to leave. He slept restlessly that night and dreamed of charcoal and ash.
The next morning he awoke with the grey mists of dawn and the chirping of the birds and stared out in the direction London was.
It had never occurred to him exactly how he was to return. Closing his eyes and wishing he was in at the orphanage proved to have no effect- perhaps because his wish was distinctly half-hearted.
The fluttering of a bird caught his eye and he was struck with an idea- I want to be a bird. A phoenix.
And before he knew it the world looked a lot larger and there was nothing under his feet.
AN: Hope you guys liked it!
I changed Tom Riddle's birth year so that the Blitz would happen when he is younger. I'm fairly sure the whole Voldemort = Fawkes thing has not been done before… so… at least it's definitely original.
This will follow canon. Yes, really. Ideas are welcome. Thanks for reading!
~Dante (edited for clarity by Kodos)