Tom Riddle was always angry, always doing things people couldn't make excuses for. Once, there was someone willing to see past that. Once, there was someone who loved him. And when he lost her, he lost everything.
o-o-o-o-o
"Come on, Tom. There's no need to be rude."
Tom grabbed his best friend's hand, not looking back at her, keeping his focus on the eight-year-old boy in front of him. "Apologize."
The boy trembled, hovering six inches off the ground now, tears streaming down his face.
"Tom!" Catherine yanked on his arm. "Let him go."
"He called you a freak." Tom clenched his free hand into a fist, and the boy gasped in pain.
"Tom. Put. Him. Down."
Tom turned to face Catherine, and unclenched his fist. The boy collapsed on the ground.
Catherine squeezed Tom's hand, moving to comfort the boy. "It's alright. He's sorry." She glanced over her shoulder. "You are sorry, aren't you, Tom?"
"I… yes. I'm sorry." He wasn't, really. But he'd apologize, for her.
"Here. Let's get you inside." Catherine helped the trembling boy to his feet, guiding him into the orphanage. Tom followed behind them, watching his best friend. They were nine years old.
o-o-o-o-o
Catherine's laughter echoed through the small courtyard, her hand just missing Tom's shoulder as he ducked behind the solitary tree in the center. "Slow down!"
"No. You'll win," Tom pointed out, smiling as he backed away.
"I know." Catherine lunged forward again, this time managing to brush her fingers against Tom's sleeve. "You're it."
The children chased each other around the courtyard for a while longer, until Catherine, exhausted, collapsed into the shade of the tree. "Will you write to me? When you go?"
"Of course." Tom sat next to his friend, holding out one hand, causing a small bird to fly down and perch on his finger. Catherine smiled, allowing the bird to hop onto her arm before flying back into the tree.
"It's really magic." Catherine's smile lit up her whole face. "It's amazing. You know that, right? When you don't hurt anyone… what you can do is amazing."
Tom looked away, suddenly ashamed. Only Catherine could make him feel that way. "I can't always… help it."
"I know. You're going to learn, though. At school."
"Yes."
Catherine raised one eyebrow, and Tom sighed.
"It's just- I wish you could come. You're the only one who… understands."
"I can't. You know I'm not like you, Tom."
"You should be. You deserve to be."
Catherine shrugged. "I don't think that's how it works."
"I mean it. You deserve… this-" Tom waved his hands, accidentally sending all the leaves on the low-hanging branch of the tree flying- "more than I do. I do bad things with my magic. You wouldn't."
Catherine leaned her head on Tom's shoulder, her brown hair trailing along the ground. "It's not your fault. Your life isn't easy. You'll learn."
"You're still kind. You're a better person than me."
"I'm not." Catherine smiled up at Tom, and he could see all the faith his best friend had in him. "You'll be fine."
They were eleven years old.
o-o-o-o-o
Tom knew that without Catherine, he wouldn't be able to stop himself from doing horrible things to people.
He was right.
Tom knew that what he did was wrong. Hurting people like this- it was wrong. There was a sickness inside him, and without Catherine, he didn't have a way to get rid of it.
Even Catherine only helped- she couldn't fix it.
Tom didn't know if anything could.
Tom told Catherine, one summer, that he didn't know what was wrong with him. Why he did these things. Catherine didn't leave him, didn't turn away from him. That was why he loved her.
She was the only one who saw the darkness in his soul, and never turned away.
Later that summer, Tom kissed Catherine in the shade of the old tree in the tiny courtyard. They were sixteen.
o-o-o-o-o
When people asked Catherine why she loved Tom Riddle, she was never sure what to tell them.
Not because she didn't know- she did. But the Tom she knew and loved was very different from the Tom most people knew.
Catherine knew Tom did terrible things. She knew that what they had couldn't last. She knew what her friend was becoming, what he, perhaps, had always been.
But love is irrational, and Catherine didn't care. If she could postpone that day, the day when the good in Tom would die, she would.
Around her, Tom was funny and charming and loving. Around her, he laughed and smiled and cried.
Around other people, he was still charming. Still charismatic- but there was a darker edge under it all, one that Catherine wasn't sure everyone else could see.
Tom was all Catherine had ever had. They'd grown up together, with all the other parentless children. Tom had defended Catherine when those other children had made fun of her- for her eyes (one green, one brown), for her quiet nature, for her habit of talking to the small birds that often perched on her windowsill.
So when they were eighteen years old, they found a place together. Tom worked in a shop that sold strange magical artefacts. Catherine tutored some of the local children. They were happy.
But Catherine knew what Tom wasn't telling her. She knew better than to blindly trust even the person she loved most in the world. She listened- Catherine had always been a good listener. She knew where the magical folk of London gathered to gossip, where news could be found.
She knew what Tom was doing. And she knew she had to go.
She had stayed with him for too long. She loved him, but she couldn't stay.
So one morning, before Tom left for work, Catherine kissed him one last time.
When Tom returned that afternoon, she was gone.
They were twenty-one years old.
o-o-o-o-o
Tom never saw Catherine again.
Without her, he quickly lost any remaining trace of humanity. He build an army, waged a pointless war, murdered hundreds of innocent people, tore thousands of lives apart.
Tom never saw Catherine again- but Catherine saw Tom.
She learned how to watch from afar. She watched Tom descend so far into the darkness that he was unrecognizable as the boy who had once defended her from orphanage bullies.
On Halloween of 1981, Catherine was the only one who wept.
Less than two months later, a knock sounded on her door. An old man with long silver hair and beard sat down in her small living room, and asked her to tell her story.
So she did.
She did not give him any of her memories of Tom- she wanted to keep those for herself- but she did allow him to view them.
"I had no idea," Albus Dumbledore said. "I never knew he had ever been capable of love."
"He wasn't" Catherine said. "Not really. He corrupted everything he loved, and I should have left far sooner than I did. I was blinded by my own love for him."
Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully, then said, "He is not dead, you know."
"I know," Catherine said. "He will return. The Tom I knew was much to stubborn to allow himself to die at the hands of an infant."
Dumbledore chuckled, then said, "That infant will grow up. Harry Potter will be the Dark Lord's downfall, I think."
"Good," Catherine said. "Death might restore his soul to what it… could have been."
"Why did you love him?" Dumbledore asked. "Forgive an old man's curiosity, but… if you always knew what he was, why did you love him?"
Catherine smiled slightly. "I loved him because he was then only person who ever saw me. Without him, I would have faded into the shadows. He protected me when I needed it, and he was kind to me. I liked that I could calm him down when he was angry. I liked being needed. But most of all… we were orphans, Albus. We were angry, every single one of us. Something about his darkness appealed to me."
Dumbledore didn't say anything for a long moment, then said, "You still love him." It wasn't a question.
"Yes. But I am not blinded by that love any longer."
Dumbledore and Catherine shook hands, and then Hogwarts' headmaster Disapparated from Catherine's front porch.
Catherine stood outside for a while longer, watching the crisp autumn leaves fall.
They were fifty-five years old.
o-o-o-o-o
Catherine knew when Tom returned.
She heard from her contacts in the Wizarding world, who were paid handsomely to bring news to the old Muggle woman with a particular interest in the Dark Lord's movements.
This time, she did not make the mistake of standing by again. She wrote to Albus Dumbledore, and joined the Order of the Phoenix. There was only so much an elderly Muggle could do in a Wizard's war, but nevertheless, she sent Dumbledore any information she could get from her contacts. She delivered messages to places where a Wizard would have been too conspicuous.
She wasn't there, at the Battle of Hogwarts. But a few short months after Tom's death, another knock sounded at her door.
A young man stood there, the lightning bolt scar barely visible under a shock of untidy black hair.
"Hello," he said uncertainly. "Um. Dumbledore's portrait sent me here… I'm not entirely sure why, though."
"You're Harry Potter," Catherine said. "I know why you're here."
"Ok." Harry came in, and sat in Catherine's old armchair. Catherine made tea, and a plate of scones.
"Who are you, exactly?" Harry asked.
"To most people, no one special," Catherine said. "I'm a seventy-one year old muggle woman, an orphan, someone who amassed a reasonable amount of wealth tutoring rich children. The only person who ever noticed me died last spring- and I hadn't seen him in fifty years before that."
Harry Potter was by no means unintelligent, and caught on quickly. "Who were you to Tom Riddle, then?"
Catherine smiled. "My name is Catherine," she said. "And I'm the only one he ever loved."
Fin.