The Ceremony

In Search of the Lost Gaunts

"Didn't diaries go out of fashion for boys your age?"

Tom Riddle stared at him carefully and then smiled, "It's a gift, sir."

"Gift, eh?" asked the shopkeeper, raising his eyebrow. He chuckled knowingly and added slyly, "From my experiences, girls don't like being gifted diaries."

"No, why?" asked Tom curiously.

"Think they're compromised," he shrugged. "My wife tells me that a diary is a girl's most secret weapon and that every girl's greatest fear is having someone read their thoughts. And they think when a boy gives them a diary there's something secret to it. Like he has a secret key and would sneak in later and try to read it when you're sleeping."

Tom smiled mechanically, "I didn't think of that."

The shopkeeper looked at him for a minute, "I hope I haven't given you any ideas."

"Of course not!"

The shopkeeper stared at him over his shoulder as he opened the box containing many notebooks and diaries. "Yeah well, just to keep my conscience clean, I'll give you one without a lock." He placed a brown bound diary on the counter. "This one can be opened by any one, you see. So your girl will take extra care all on her own." Tom ran his fingers around the book and then opened its pages and began sifting through the pages. "Everyone thinks the locks make it safe, they think if the keep the key hidden it's safe but that's the trouble with hiding things, see. Or keeping things secret. Once the key's gone or someone else gets it, before you know it everyone would have read it. This way, they'll know the score and do it themselves. After all there isn't any key to hide."

Riddle gave him the money and pocketed the book and left the shop. The book had nearly two hundred blank pages, unlined made of thick brown paper. It spanned the palm of Riddle's hand and fit into his pockets. But then Riddle's hands and pockets weren't of average size. Riddle trudged along the busy London street with the diary in his hand, opening it and looking at it carefully. A diary is a secret weapon, the Muggle's words entered his mind.A silly girl's toy. But it would do for his experiments.

Tom Riddle spent two of his twelve months in an orphanage on Vauxhall Street in London. That meant that he would sleep there at the end of the day but leave early in the morning. Tom was always more independent than the other children in the orphanage. More independent and more mysterious. He had been ever since he got that secret scholarship to that boarding school up north. The one which Mrs. Cole told them was part of a scheme by the sponsors of the institute to help poor orphan children. This made him the object of envy among the children - Tommy Riddle, the mean big kid who always got his way, who never got punished. But of course none dared to cross him. Unlucky things always happened to those who talked back to him, those who incurred his displeasure. Riddle talked to no one in the Orphanage and he would spend most of his time during his summer there, walking around London, going to favourable places and returning home at night to sleep. He slept in the same old bed he had been in when he got his invitation.

He remembered that day well. His room had been visited by Albus Dumbledore, who was the first wizard he had ever known and even if years had passed, he still feared the one man who saw him for what he was - A cornered animal all set to bite back. He had been shocked to find out a few days later when he entered Diagon Alley that Dumbledore was exceptional even among his own kind. The most respected and admired wizard of his world who had been teaching at Hogwarts for nearly twenty years and who as part of his responsibility to his school, welcomed muggle-raised wizards such as himself into the ways and customs of the world to which he belonged. He didn't know what to believe. All that power dedicated to burning wardrobes and punishing little punks. He had expected more. All the childhood fantasy stories from the books at the orphanage had sorcerers and warlocks who were capable of controlling people's minds and making other people do their bidding. Of course they were Muggle relics of the old days before the Statute of Secrecy but he didn't think that the magical world would decide all of a sudden to simply not exercise their will, not be their true selves. Albus Dumbledore can be satisfied with that mediocrity but Riddle was unimpressed.

Tom walked into the Orphanage, passing the matron along the way and didn't stop until he reached the desk of Mrs. Cole. She was busy writing a letter until she saw Tom Riddle approaching him.

"Mrs. Cole," he said politely.

"Yes, Tom!" she said cautiously, staring up at his sharp grey eyes.

"I – wanted to ask you about something," he said softly. Time it right, each word, each syllable¸ he thought. "You see, last year at school…I got to check some old records. I think I might have found something about my – my mother." He paused, letting it sink in. There it comes, thought the cold voice in his mind. The sympathy, the concern, the understanding. She wants to say something. But she doesn't know what to say. Fool…she's just like that idiot Dippet. He continued, "There's a village in the South where her family used to stay. I found out where it is on the map. I know which bus to take to get there and my friends lent me some money to go there. I only need to search there for three days and if I find anything I'll give you a call."

Mrs. Cole stared at Tom for several moments. She saw what she thought was longing for a sense of lost identity, a feeling that she knew all too well among her charges. She saw a handsome young man who she thought was an odd egg as a kid but who seemed to have done well at the school. And he knew how to take care of himself. She also felt bad for a young man having to borrow money from his friends to go to his mother's house. So she said that Tom could come back when he was finished. That the orphanage would still be open for him and furthermore, if he felt burden for having borrowed from his friends well the orphanage would pay for his trip. She gave him the money he needed, including bus fare going and coming, money for food and even offered him her brother's old suitcase for the trip. But Tom declined the last and merely accepted the money. He informed Mrs. Cole as he walked to the steps that the bus would leave at night and that he would be resting and reading in his room until then and that he would not want to disturb anyone. Mrs. Cole assured him that no one would disturb him in turn, the real intent behind the meaning of his phrase.

He returned to his room and looked around. It was bare of everything on the walls save for the wardrobe that Albus Dumbledore once set alight. Next to his bed was a trunk. It was packed with all his Hogwarts supplies. He sat on his bed and placed the diary on the bed and counted the money on his hand. As a small child, this paper money with the Queen's face emblazoned on it, with the seal of the Bank of England had meant the possibility of power. For the muggle, the most powerful were the ones who held money. The ones who everybody worshipped were the Royal Family, whose parades, weddings and divorces occupied the headlines despite the prevalence of Depression and an impending war, and then it was the businessmen, the movie stars, the lucky lottery winners. Or the gangsters who robbed, killed for money, and who travelled in stolen vehicles.

Now he had known that there existed golden money in the safest most beautiful bank in the world. The one run by those goblins. Unlike Muggle money which had special paper printed and minted to stand in for the amount of gold owned by the government treasury, this was gold, silver and bronze cast into coins by those creatures and each coin was unique and impossible to replicate. The ways of legally getting gold were the same in both worlds, thought Tom – You had to be born rich, you had to work hard and get rich at the end of your life, or you could get rich quick by a stroke of luck, a smartly timed investment or by marriage. But there were things greater than money in his world. Magic allowed a small orphan child to be the most respected and most admired boy in the school – teacher's favourite, prefect and model student, whom all the boys from all the houses respected and whom all the girls cast their eye on. It thrilled him to see the spell he cast on them all. How he could charm his way around them. Even the professors and the Headmaster fell in love with him. Save Dumbledore of course.

Above all things that mattered was power. Knowledge was Power, the Muggles knew well, but to use that knowledge you had to know how to charm your way around them all, how to bend them over to your will, make them all do what you want and make a smooth getaway so that you could clear your tracks. That was the Slytherin way. He smirked and smiled wildly. A sense of chaos drove deep in him. He had found out last year what he had guessed all along. He was the last heir of Salazar Slytherin himself. He had known he was special from the day those snakes started speaking to him. They were so useful, teaching him more about the land, about houses and places than he ever knew. Secret corners in London that bobby cops got lost in were cakewalk for him, because his friends told him how to escape and how to remain hidden and when someone was coming. They could smell them all. At Hogwarts he found the word for what he was – a Parselmouth. A rare but controversial gift, whose most famous practitioner was none other than Salazar Slytherin.

He had endeavoured since then to learn all about history. Of Slytherin and his time, of the school he built. He had known that Slytherin wanted to keep all the muggle influence out of Hogwarts that Gryffindor, that muggle-loving rabble-rouser opposed him. That the other two founders, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, weak willed as they were sided against Slytherin and He left. He grew old and lived far away from the castle, did not let any of his children enrol into the school he built and then died very old and alone. His surviving sons married into the families of Slytherin's own hand-picked students and Parseltongue was a common gift amongst the descendants. But the last wizard bearing the Slytherin name died before marriage. That was in the 12th Century. Riddle continued sitting on the bed and stared into the blank wall as his mind charted the trace of the bloodline, his spine tingling in anticipation. Over the years the Slytherins married into Peverells, Mowbrays, Marlowes – the first pureblood families who died away later on. Some of them married into descendants of the Hufflepuff line. The only child of Ravenclaw died before marriage and Gryffindor had no children. Making Slytherin and Hufflepuff the only two founders, magical families could trace their line to.

Slytherin he found out had left a chamber carved and designed by himself for use by his heir, according to a legend that had been passed orally from the first Slytherins downwards. Tom, who heard the story from Florean Fortescue and confirmed it with his friends, had endeavoured to find it and he had discovered it last year, in of all the places, a girl's toilet. He remembered how he had followed a squabbling pair of first year girls who were arguing loudly in a girl's bathroom, he had walked in and told them to return to bed, he had gone to the mirror to examine himself until his eye had caught a snake carved next to a tap. No other tap in that room had a snake carved on it and so Tom commanded it to open but his gift with snake speech and his comfort with the tongue allowed it come out in hisses and to his surprise, it revealed a portal underneath the bathroom. It took several days until he had learned to control the Basilisk, the most beautiful animal in the entire world. It had been left by Slytherin in the hopes that his true heir would discover it, which is someone who was as cunning and daring and full of nerve as Salazar himself and who had the gift of Parseltongue. Unleashing the beast on school had led to many injuries and one death. Tom of course had arranged everything so that he had gotten away, he framed a stupid oaf who had the audacity to raise an Acromantula in a trunk and the entire school had done as he expected them to do. Even he was surprised at how well it had gone. Of course, he would have to give the chamber a wide berth until later.

Tom remembered how the girl died. A weak, snivelling thing in glasses, a first year Mudblood from Ravenclaw. He saw how she stared into those eyes (which always remained shut when it faced him) and how they were inflamed and burnt and then she had fallen to the ground like a dropped doll, her eyes permanently blank. He had not planned for that death of course. Using the Basilisk was a game for him, to scare and provoke his fellow students. It had almost led to the school being shut and his one great kingdom permanently taken from him. But Tom did not desire any exile from his birthright, at least not until he was academically qualified. The chamber itself was a nicely done room, beautifully lit and finely brocaded but it only spurred Tom to further heights, to a greater destiny. He had known long before he discovered it, that he had a great destiny that he was Slytherin's last surviving blood relative.

He remembered all the time he poured over all the genealogy books, looking in vain for the name of a magical family of Riddle. He had been certain that his father after whom he was named after was a wizard. But he had never found the name of a single family nor did any of his pureblood friends whom he trusted heard of any family old or recent called Riddle. He had come to the point of accepting the chance that he might be a Muggleborn (the idea repulsed him terribly) when his mind turned on his mother. She had died without giving her name and the orphanage matrons didn't find any papers that told them who she might be. All he had was her last words which had named him and she had told them that he would be "Tom after his father and Marvolo after her father." Marvolo sounded like a wizard name, he had realized in that late hour in the library. He then searched for any historical Marvolos and at last come across a report in an old Daily Prophet that mentioned a story of a Marvolo Gaunt, resident of Little Hangleton who had attacked the Ministry to attend a hearing where his son Morfin was wanted for questioning regarding an attack on Muggles who lived there, and both father and son were sentenced to Azkaban. This interested Tom greatly who saw the Slytherin tradition of non-conformity and Muggle-superiority in the actions of his Gaunt forbears.

The family name on his lips, he had researched their history. The Gaunts were once very wealthy and prominent but controversial and violent. Muggle attacks and murders were common in their history and he had found their names on the family trees of the Lestranges and the Malfoys. One of the Gaunts was Minister for Magic. Montgomery Gaunt's reign ended in a Goblin Rebellion which began after he ordered the Aurors to suppress one demonstration by force, resulting in a shocking massacre. This minister was eventually assassinated alongside his wife in an Opera by assassins who were never caught and captured. And since then the Gaunts entered dishonour and decline. The descendants were spineless, and lacked the ambition and creativity of their forebears and eventually they disappeared. The last Gaunt worthy of historical record was Martha Gaunt, a popular seeker for a Quidditch team who had married a muggle. Riddle had paused to sneer at the possibility that he might have distant Muggle relations or might be a descendant of this matrilineal branch. It revolted him to have any blood ties to the muggle world. But then what about dear Dad that cold voice had hissed to him. If his family name isn't here then what is he? Tom of course knew that not all the families were listed here, that genealogies were done by pureblood obsessives who would never admit relation to anyone regarded as outsiders until said outsider was famous and respected. It was well known that Dumbledore's family was a poor, lower order name that only began appearing on family trees after its most famous progeny's fame. It might be that his father was of a same story.

What drove him to the Gaunts was that they had reputations for being Parselmouths which had to mean they were connected to Slytherin. Parselmouths were rare and all studies had shown it was hereditary. He couldn't conclusively trace the Gaunts to Slytherin but maybe if he went there to meet the survivors he could learn more. He discovered the name of Merope Gaunt on a birth announcement dated to the late 1900s which meant that she was of child rearing age at the time of her father and brother's incarceration. He had to see for himself if Marvolo Gaunt, his grandfather was still alive or if he knew where his father was.

He had arranged transport as he had told Mrs. Cole but not as he had told her. He had no intention of riding any bus. Even that ridiculous purple bus that those commoners use, he sneered angrily. Ever since Dumbledore had told him that all students who accept Hogwarts had to abide by laws he had been interested in how those laws were maintained. It impressed him to find the effective organization to prevent Muggle breaches, to maintain order. No single wizard on his own, regardless of power could break that society. He may fight hard and true but he would eventually be finished, broken or captured. And he knew only the surface. One needed an army and an army that included many magical creatures. Yet he knew there were ways to bend these rules. No under-age wizard was allowed to use magic was the rule. Yet the magic they used to monitor such violations was surpassable. Lestrange and Avery had done magic in their homes, he had seen for himself. The magic of a wizard dwelling and the failure to report violations by their parents had allowed them to use magic in their rooms, their basements and attics. Busybodies in Diagon Alley would keep an eye on his use of magic there but in Knockturn Alley one had free reign. And one got access to ways to hide oneself from the ministry in such places. Such as potions for concealment and protection from any magical tracing charm and also the way in which one made illegal portkeys. Portkeys were strictly regulated, he knew but provided one knew the location and address and could place it on a map, and arranged it privately and secretly, one could be safe.

Tom had been using portkeys for travel since his third year. He would make them in his final years at Hogwarts, set them at a precise time on a particular day. That was his way of travel across the country, towards important areas of wizard culture or to personal haunts such as his cave on the sea, the place that became his personal castle.

The portkey he would use today was a harmonica that he had bought for himself. He bought it in an ordinary muggle shop, his first private purchase on the day he received the fund from Dumbledore. Most would buy clothes, or food or some game. But he bought the harmonica to replace the one that was among the stolen contraband that Dumbledore had insisted he return. It was his object of choice. Simple and innocuous. As innocuous as the diary he had purchased. But no the diary was for another experiment, one that would need his return to Hogwarts and which he did not plan to proceed while living in the Muggle world. He would return to Hogwarts in three weeks.

The watch in the living room had told him that it would be another ten minutes to 1 o'clock and he had been sitting in this room patiently for the half hour it took for him to teleport out of the room. The mouth organ was in his pocket and any moment he expected to be released from this place. He walked to the door and shut it and then towards the window. He stared outside for a while. He briefly saw some of the children below playing football. At one point as a young child he felt jealousy at not being asked to participate in those games until he decided that he was above these things. His fellow orphans who would snivel and cry at times for their loneliness, their poverty and the abandonment and rejection that was part of their day to day life. He had nothing but contempt for those children who would pretty themselves up, would dress better like a poodle on parade whenever prospective parents came in. Tom aware of the power of his charm, always stood clear and played dull any time some sentimental woman came near him, intrigued by his good looks. He had no place anymore for replacement parents, especially the childless couples or some latterly bereaved young mother. It was all a delusion. Only someone unafraid of the truth would remain above the petty snivelling, and self-justifications which came under the guise of benevolent intentions. Even worse was when some of their former friends would visit, well-fed and well-dressed. He remembered Billy Stubbs adopted by a teacher who visited two summers ago. Tom had mocked him and asked if his new parents had bought him another rabbit and Stubbs horrified by that grotesque memory left quickly.

Yet, Tom had to know for himself the truth of his parentage. If only to settle all doubts and scores with the little orphan who didn't know he was a wizard. He closed the window, draped it shut. He sat intently, waiting for the moment. He placed his hand inside his robes and removed his dearest possession, an object he was unashamed of claiming he loved. It was thirteen inches, made of yew and it contained a core of a phoenix feather. He had bought this wand from Ollivander's, a shop in Diagon Alley, on his first day at Hogwarts. He had gone through many, many boxes in the showroom. Ollivander had told him that it meant he was a rare and difficult customer and that an ordinary wand would not do. Ollivander had to go into his study and bring out two boxes. Wands he claimed were his most recent creations. The first wand was made out of holly and also had a phoenix feather in it. He had thought it was right at first but it didn't work at all. The other wand was the latest Ollivander creation and that was his. Ollivander had told him it was rare when a newly crafted wand found a master on its very first try.

It was charted out for him, thought Tom. My destiny. It all fits – the most respected wizard of modern times personally gives me my invitation to Hogwarts, I share with the greatest wizard the land has ever known the gift to speak to snakes, I get a wand that was essentially made for me and I am the last descendant of the founder of Hogwarts.

At the last thought, Riddle experienced a sensation of a hook latching under his nose and he disappeared from his room in the orphanage.

The portkey had him landing inside a toilet. The smell made him nauseated and he walked out. The abandoned toilet was exactly where he knew it would be. On a city street next to an inn. He had found out about Little Hangleton in brochures he had looked up in the same shop where he had bought his diary. The shopkeeper had told him a little about the place, a doctor in the town was his cousin. He had called this doctor and asked for information about the place; information that would not be available in a brochure, such as the presence of a public toilet, out of service and abandoned next to an inn. Again careful not to mention the Gaunts, he had merely mentioned that he believed he had some relations there, presenting himself as an orphan boy in search of identity. He himself could not answer why he was so secretive about what he wanted. That had always been the way he did things. He never had anyone with whom to share or anyone with whom he desired to share things. And also the same sense of destiny that had filled him for so many years. He wanted to do everything on his own, to show them that he could carry out without any of them. Great Slytherin prized those who were independent, who were resourceful and who wanted to prove themselves, he thought with satisfaction.

He immediately walked down the road to the path leading to the corner of the valley within which Little Hangleton was nestled. Riddle thought the village was fine. Not unworthy to be deemed the land of his ancestors. Even if it is filled with filthy muggles. His eyes paused towards the big mansion that he saw over the village hills. He had seen images of homes like that in some books and newspapers in his childhood. They were homes for the Royals, the Lords, businessmen or movie stars. It had filled him with longing to gaze at homes like that in his youth. The one above was splendid, he thought. Nothing like Abraxas Malfoy's home but comparable. But he knew that the Gaunts did not live there in that house.

After discovering the existence of Marvolo Gaunt, he had sent an owl to the Daily Prophet with a list of further questions about the Gaunts, chiefly whether they still lived in Little Hangleton and where. He smiled arrogantly at the thought that he had placed the request in the guise of an eager student working on a Muggle Studies project, using the attack by the Gaunts on the Muggles as a point of reference. Lying and hiding was as natural to him as breathing. He was different with different people; he sent owls under many aliases and names, even under different handwritings. His memory allowed him to keep track of his different roles and disguises.

It was his way of being Tom Riddle, common Tom, poor handsome brave prefect who always got his way with people. At the same he detested the pretence and the bad faith of his life. He would not be Riddle forever, oh no. He would have a new name, worthier of his calling.

He paused at the path at the beginning of a small meadow. He removed a paper from his pocket and stared at it, the return owl with the answers to his questions had told him that the place was registered as The House of Gaunt in the Floo Network but it had been taken of the grid for more than fifty years and that there has been little information tracking the area since the arrest. The records had told him that Gaunt, father and son, had been committed to Azkaban but their sentence ought to have been done by then and since their arrest the Prophet did not follow up on them.

"…Massterr Morfinn…Must return to him"

Tom stared towards the grassy corner by the side of the road. He stared through it and found a garden snake slithering in it. This is the place.

He opened his mouth and communicating sharply in the language of the snakes, "Take me to Morfin…"

The snake paused and coiled to him. "…You sspeak just like master…"

Riddle smiled, "I am master now…"

The snake led him away from the roads and through the meadow. Riddle trudged silently behind the snake. He looked behind. The road to the village square was growing smaller. His eyes traversed the receding village landscape. He noticed a church and an outline of a graveyard. His eyes lingered to it for a short moment. His eyes then travelled to the great mansion which loomed over the village.

A short while later he noticed the outline of a dilapidated shack. He walked with a graceful step, an ominous sense of purpose filling his very fibre. It would be a day he would never forget.