Summer was waning and the darkness that fell over the small village of Little Hangleton still had a tinge of daytime heat, just enough to coat the back of one's neck with a thin layer of perspiration, should one still be outside at that late hour.
As it happened, there was someone moving very quietly and carefully though the warm evening, wandering up the steep grade toward the stately manor of the Riddle family, which consisted of the two elder Riddles and their grown son, Tom, about whom the villagers still gossip regarding his somewhat scandalous and abrupt marriage to, and subsequent divorce from, the daughter of local tramp Marvolo Gaunt. He had quite suddenly become smitten with Merope Gaunt but had returned home some months later, unmarried and without explanation. And there he remained for sixteen years, never taking another bride nor siring any heir to the Riddles' significant fortune. That, more even so than the marriage to the tramp's daughter, was the topic of the most furious gossip.
If one were to peer out their sitting room window at precisely seven o'clock on that balmy summer's eve, they might have seen the dark figure snaking its way up to the Riddles' front gate. And if they had been keen of sight, they may even have made out the curious way in which the gate, a heavy wrought-iron piece, swung open seemingly of its own accord. But as this occurred as most families were sitting down to supper, there were no such wandering eyes to witness the seemingly impossible, and that would be the word all around the village when the police began questioning the whole of Little Hangleton about the terrible murders of all three Riddles that would be discovered the following morning.
In the dim starlight, a boy, no older than sixteen, pale but handsome with dark hair and even darker eyes, raised a strange bit of wood in a thin ashen hand and pointed it at a heavy iron gate. "Alohamora," hissed a thin voice like air escaping a tire, and the gate swung open on silent hinges. A dark smile parted the boy's lips as he stepped through onto the grounds of the Riddle estate. Golden light spilled across a meticulously tended lawn from what he suspected was the dining room window. Inside he could make out the shapes of several people moving about, likely sitting down for supper.
As he slithered with unnatural stealth up the walk, he gripped tightly the slim length of wood in his hand; it was a wand, but it wasn't his own wand. This wand was old and dinted, coated with grime and scored with innumerable careless scratches. It was the wand that belonged to his uncle, whom he had only recently met for the first time and who, at the moment, lay unconscious in a shack a half mile from the Riddle house outside which the boy now stalked. Though it distressed him greatly to use a wand which had endured so much abuse over its decades in service to a man so very near to feral that he couldn't function within normal society, magical or otherwise, the boy knew it would be quite impossible to use his own wand for the evening's planned activities. So he endured, forging his own path ahead as he had done his entire life, never requiring the assistance of others or accepting it when offered. Everything he did, he did on his own. Everything he'd accomplished, he'd earned himself. No one could ever question his greatness, not now or ever.
He trudged still lightly up the lawn, seeming to cast no shadow nor reflect any light; he moved as if made of the darkness itself, like a cold breeze on a moonless night. He found the back door locked, as he'd expected to, but upon repeating that strange word, "Alohamora," it swung open with just the faintest of clicks and the boy entered, shutting the door behind himself.
Following the voices, he wove though the interior of the home, taking the time to gaze at his surroundings, at all the affluent luxuries he himself had never known having grown up in an orphanage. His blood boiled at the thought that while he grew up poor and lacking in everything, all of this wealth, to which he was rightfully entitled, was wasted on those most undeserving. However, Muggle wealth mattered little to him now. Now all that mattered was power, and in that respect, it was he who came out on top.
The boy was close now, creeping through the hallway just outside the dining room, wherein the Riddle family sat in discussion over their supper.
"There was a terrible shriek from the Gaunt shack as I rode past this afternoon," came a man's voice. The boy surmised that it was Tom, the elder Riddles' son. An old woman's voice then said, "Oh, I do so wish someone would do something about that eyesore. Perhaps you heard that awful man having some kind of fit." There was something nasty in the hopeful way she said it.
Another man cleared his throat. "We're never that lucky, Mary," he said in a gruff voice; an old man, it had to be old Mr. Riddle. "That…man…worse than his father. At least the woman kept mostly to herself."
The son, Tom, seemed to choke briefly on his food for a moment and there was a long silence filled with the soft tinkle of silverware on glass.
The boy fumed. The woman. The woman had been a witch, placing her high above the common Muggle scum who dared speak of her with such contempt. They should be bowing at the feet of the Gaunts, not tritely conversing about them over dinner as if they were no more than vermin. Muggles didn't know just how weak they really were. If it weren't for the Ministry and its outrageous pro-Muggle policies, wizards like the Gaunts would be Lords and Masters over the pompous Riddles and everyone like them.
"You know one of the townspeople came up to the house today, Mother." The boy stiffened his back at the voice as the younger Riddle broke the deafening silence.
"Oh?" the old woman inquired.
"Yes, whilst you slept this afternoon," Tom went on. "He was looking for donations like a common beggar," he said, his words dripping with contempt.
"Ought to be laws against that sort of thing," the elder Tom blustered. "Bothering people in the middle of the day looking for handouts. I never asked for a handout in my life!"
"I think we should build a wall around the property," Tom said haughtily. "That fence is clearly not doing the job keeping out the riffraff."
The boy had heard enough. This was his moment. He stepped into the room and raised his stolen wand. "AVADA KEDAVRA!" he hissed, pouring every ounce of hatred he had for the Riddles into the spell. In a green flash, an elderly man collapsed back in his seat. Before his gray-haired wife could react, another flash of green sent her body falling limply to the floor, like a marionette whose strings had been severed.
"What—?" cried their frightened son, but before he could move, the boy leveled his wand at him and his body went rigid, as if bound by…magic.
"You'll be wanting to know who I am, I imagine," the boy said coolly. As he stepped full into the light, however, he could see by the expression on Tom Riddle's face that no introduction was necessary. "Did you know that she was pregnant when you left her, Father?" he asked, nearly choking on the word. Though Tom Riddle was his biological father, he felt no familial bond to him, nor to his filthy Muggle grandparents, whom he had just killed. "Or that she named me after you? Tom Marvolo Riddle. Disgusting Muggle name," he spat. Tom Riddle the younger slithered near to his father, who was still bound by invisible restraints to his chair, unable to move save to express his complete and utter terror. "We look very much alike, you and I," the boy Tom said, gazing down at his father's frightened face, which really did display a remarkable resemblance to his own. "But I am greater than you can imagine. And some day, your kind will kneel before me and call me 'My Lord.' Pity you will never see your son become the greatest wizard of all time."
With the barest shadow of a smile Tom Marvolo Riddle raised his uncle's wand and aimed it at his father's heart. "Good-bye, Father." He spat the incantation one last time and a burst of green light momentarily encapsulated Tom, sr. before his body slumped backward and his eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling.
With a wave of his wand, the sole surviving Riddle snuffed out the lights. "I suppose I'll be needing a new name, now," he said to himself as he wound back through the darkened house and out into the night, feeling more empowered than ever before. These deaths were but the first. There would be more, many more, during his rise to power. But never his own, oh no. Killing those Muggles had changed the boy, shown him how fragile human life really was. He vowed then, as he trudged back to the Gaunt shack, that he would never succumb to such weakness as death. Death was for the common man and he had no intention of ever being common again.