He came back to the orphanage, in the end. He couldn't avoid it entirely: it was… retribution. Not revenge. Tom Riddle would not stoop so low as to call it revenge. Revenge needed some kind of empathy for one's former self and Tom Riddle held no such sentiment. It had been necessary, his time there, in the same way that this task was necessary: each made way for itself. Being hated had toughened his skin, hardened his heart (because, whatever that withered old fool said, he did have one, whether or not it was locked away in a dark place) and helped him, in turn, to punish the hater in a way Time would surely be proud.
Sin, after all, engineers its own punishment.
Disillusioned, he strode purposefully up the grey corridors, ignoring the current tenants down to their last rag. He knew most of them - it had only been six years – but it felt like an age to Tom. It felt like forever.
Lord Voldemort was a world away from these miserable scrounges. Yet…he had come. He still was not quite the man yet: he still had to banish the boy.
Reaching the office, he stretched out a hand. Creaking, the door opened. Tom winced as it did, scouring the corridor behind him with his eyes before he entered, to make sure he hadn't been seen. Maybe it would start a ghost story. Maybe it would start a revolt.
In the dim light of the office, a woman sat: grey and worn and hard, just like the rest of the god-forsaken building. Over-large spectacles were balanced precariously on her harried face and she was squinting at myriad forms on her desk to make them out; bad eyesight as much as anything.
Tom had always hated Mrs Cole. She was thin, raggedy and pathetic, just like her charges. She had never paid anyone any heed except her superiors; lost in her own little world of depression or whatever it was that kept her from noticing bruises and tears and dirt except at the most inopportune times, and listened only to those she asked questions to. And therefore Tom was always in the wrong. Because it was just so convenient that he was.
Which was why, despite his recent growth-spurt, despite the fact his face had lost almost all its baby fat, despite the fact he had changed his hairstyle and his accent… she recognised him almost the instant he dropped the charm.
"Tom," she said. She was blinking. Looking rather out of her depth, seeing a former pupil so grown up (not defenceless) and so well-attired (not unnoticed).
He didn't dignify her with an answer. She had been his misery: he would be hers. He lifted his wand.
The muggle newspaper the next morning would dignify a lone paragraph to the burnt-out shell. It would tell readers that 282 had perished, 118 had escaped with grievous injuries, 32 had sustained minor injuries and only 3 had been left unharmed. Tom might have been happy. Gleeful. He might have been sad. He might have mourned the orphan body: his brothers and sisters in all but blood and the staff his stand-in parents. Lord Voldemort, walking from the blackened skeleton he had once called laughably 'home', just would not care.