1. Meeting
After spending a whole hour negotiating prices with an elderly, seemingly-condescending witch for a ridicolously tiny plate with some weird never-seen Runes incripted on its surface, Tom again had to cope silently with its utter and unconcealable contempt for his job. There really wasn't a single redeeming thing about it: the worktime was long, the store owners were unbearable, the people were infuriating and their bargains laughable, at the beginning at least, before they claimed to actually expect him to give them a fortune for mismatched socks, ancient pebbles and patched handkerchiefs; and the worst thing was, each time an interesting customer holding a fascinating artefact showed up, Burke immediately pushed him away and rushed to the counter to haggle.
But it wasn't the fact he couldn't trust him enough to do the job which annoyed him, of course - couldn't have cared less about what that awful old skank thought of him; he'd have just wanted it to be more pleasant, depriving those self-conscious Wizards and Witches of their most precious belongings, minimizing the loss and sky-rocketing the profit whilst seeming gentlemanly and naive in the process, boosting their egos by making them feel like they won the fight while really, they did foolishly lose.
It was a caprice of his, of course, a whim: it was all worthwhile anyway, waiting to grasp the Wizarding World's most valuable, refined and untouched treasures in his own hands and make them the means through which he would have achieved his forever-lasting glory.
So he thought, looking down on the chair on which he used to sit when there where no customers needing him: damn it, he shall never rest, for he was the Dark Lord and his Power would've laid down everyone who would've dared oppose him.
"Ay! Tommy Tommy, boy! There's yet another delightful young lady here looking for you! Don't want to make her wait, uh, Tommy?! You can leave earlier, by the way... not really going to need ya for later this evening."
Resisting the rising temptation to debilitate him by a snap of his fingers, Tom left his meditation corner in the storehouse and went behind the desk... to find the unexpected.
He was accostumed to beautiful girls coming to see him, and although he didn't find it by any means "flattering" as many else would have, nor did he find any appeal in inquiring in further affairs with them, it was certainly preferrable to meeting a kid who couldn't have been older than fourteen years old, looking at him with widened and defiant eyes instead of quivering around the furniture like all the other maidens, too shy to even raise their heads while blabbering their indisputable love for him...
"Good evening, sir. Might you be Tom Riddle? They said it is you... please tell me if I'm mistaken, I'd be very sorry to bother otherwise " she asked politely, in a pristine but firm voice that hid a premature decisiveness: this kid was as far as timid as you can get.
"... yes, it is me. While you are?" he confirmed, a little bewildered by her sudden bold stare.
What did she want, and why did she look like she knew him perfectly? Her face was indeed familiar, but only because he had seen her a few times crossing the Slytherin
Common Room. Worse: despite his best efforts, she was, probably unbeknownst to herself, shielding his mental penetration, so that he couldn't get to know anything about her, not even something really irrelevant. This made him incredibly nervous, irritated, and at the same time, irresistibly curious.
"My name's Emmeline Vance, pleased to meet you. I've got a few things to ask; may I temporarily distract you from your occupation? It's really important" she then asserted unhesistatingly, quickly eyeing his boss.
"Well, I have no occupation to be distracted from, haven't I?" he snarked, haggering nervously, loud enough that Caracturus could hear him.
"What, what? I said you can escort your sweetheart out, Tom! Now wander off, please, 'cause, you know, there's real business going on while you youngsters have fun!"
Tom didn't need or want to hear the last part of it: he opened the door for Emmeline and got out of the shop, in Knockturn Alley.
"I don't think we should go further: this is a good place to talk in private" Emmeline stated, looking around to check if there were any passers-by and stopping a few steps away from Borgin and Burkes' entrance.
Tom nodded, without uttering a single word. If he couldn't use magic to foresee one's identity, being silent would've normally helped his intellect in doing the exact same, with equally satisfying outcomes... and yet, all of his attempts had proved quite fruitless. Instead, he had caught a faintly perceptible rattle of a quaint friend of hers, of about the same age, coming from as far as the beginning of the alley, and guessed she wasn't as prepared to talk to him as Emmeline was.
"Alright... I know this could be very upsetting and again, I'm sorry if I'm wrong and, hence, for wasting your time. What I wanted to ask you is... are you Merope Gaunt's son?"
All of Tom's muscles stirred.
How in the world did she know that?! HOW?! Nobody knew! Nobody could know, apart from - maybe - Dumbledore! He had hidden EVERYTHING that could have given a shred of a clue about his family tree... and a fourteen-year-old girl all of the sudden asked him THAT! He was absolutely furious and immediately stood up to her, as he had nothing to fear from a nasty extroverted child, whispering as menacingly as he could:
"How in the world have you come to know that? Tell me at once, or else I suggest we shall end this conversation and part to never see each other AGAIN!"
Her expression turned into a very glum pout at that, which conveyed annoyance more than fear, outraging him even more. She let out a big breath before answering sharply, her tongue between her teeth:
"I'm sorry if I've upset you. I thought it would have been a nice thing for the both of us to know... because if you are her son, thereby you are my cousin."
Tom's eyebrows raised so high in his forehead they almost touched his hair. She was... his relative? No, he had no relatives left! Why would anyone lie about that? To gain prestige? But if so, why was she telling him? Was she illusional? Or conversely, she was insane. Could have been, but didn't quite seem so, as she was admittedly very cunning, more than most people he'd known - which actually made for a factual chance for the two of them to be blood-related. Exasperatingly, since her mind was still impenetrable and he couldn't come up with anything logically possible, the only way he could know for sure was listening to whatever she was willing to tell him.
"And how is that?" he daintily asked, lowering his chin to her eyes to belittle her and relieve himself.
"Your father is my mother's twin brother. Her name's Dorothy Riddle. She came to know of your father's marriage upon her return to Little Hangleton to visit our grandparents: they told her."
When she stopped talking, Emmeline looked emotional. Determined though she was, it was clear that her family wasn't something she was comfortable talking about with a stranger and, much to Tom's joy, she succumbed: he finally found a breach in her mind and could gladly stop listening to her unblushing blabbering. Nevertheless, his findings weren't in the least reassuring: her father had been called Olympus Vance, of Pure-blood descent and, apparently, had been killed by his own filthy Muggle father a few years after she was born. Of course Emmeline had consciously retained this piece of information for herself, as well as that she had seen him walk past the church at his father and grandparents' funeral. She was of great courage and intellect, precocious in getting around at conundrums of any kind, but - much to his surprise and distaste - was a Hufflepuff and had an off-putting soft side to her. She loved her Muggle mother and her father and thought of him every day, which was laughable and a waste of time since she had never met him; she also consorted with the same tedious young girl that was hiding further, Eileen Prince, of whom she thought very highly for an unclear reason. It seemed to be both to boost her own ego, as she, along with another Gryffindor girl they both seemed to dislike, were the best students in their year, and because she, most reasonably, envied her for having been sorted in Slytherin.
She was a peculiar kid but, most importantly, she knew about his origins, which obliged him to keep an eye on her so that she didn't pass anything on. Once again, he realised he couldn't let her go just yet.
"Well, that's... unexpected. And, by the way, you have my most heartfelt apologies for my inexcusable behaviour, and hope you'll be able to understand this topic is a particularly sensitive one for me... as it is to you, I suppose. In all fairness, I never saw something like this happening, but, now that it has, I must say it is liberating, being able to share something so private with someone."
"I feel the same way" Emmeline commented, in such a spontaneously smooth way Tom immediately regretted his decision "And don't worry about earlier. Anyway, I feel like I should tell you... it's not only me who knows about you."
The rattle in the alley became much more audible after that and started to go with a recurring moaning.
"Come out, Eileen! You can't just nestle there all the while! He's not going to devour you, you know!"
As much as he would've liked to retort there was a very high chance of that happening, and to the both of them, Tom couldn't do anything else besides welcoming her loony partner in crime and keeping himself mannerly and pleasant as she somehow managed to trip up.
When she stood up again and got closer, she had become as crimson as a Red Cap, which was no remedy to her extraordinary lack of outward beauty. Tom usually didn't care much, but added to her dullness and cowardice, it made for one of the least people he would have liked to have an affiliation with.
"Good evening, sir... pardon, I mean Tom... pardon... I don't know how may I call you, sir" she stammered, beaded in sweat, looking at him feverishly with static eyes.
"You both call me Lord Voldemort. It's the most proper name I've come up with for myself, yet" he answered steadily, still looking at Emmeline.
"I heard that name. It is very... very fitting. You are a legend, of course. Many still love you at Hogwarts, they miss you and really wish you'd come again" Eileen continued, bending forward and constantly losing her breath while talking.
"As a matter of fact, I want to come back, and now I have one more good reason to. We shall really get to know each other, Emmeline, and make up for life's unfairness that set us apart."
"They say Headmaster Dippet was prompted by Dumbledore to reject you because he doesn't trust you to do the job, which is nonsense to me. You are possibly more apt to the job than anybody else in the Wizarding World." Eileen insisted, in a quietly worshipful tone.
Tom would have very much preferred not having been reminded that. He scoffed at Eileen and asserted:
"Professor Dumbledore can't keep me away from that position for much longer. He'll soon have to resign to the fact that all the rumors are entirely false and put away his prejudices against me."
Eileen nodded, adoring, and granted him her unremitting support. Emmeline instead was more doubtful: after an accurate mind analysis, Tom detected she suspected him for the killing of his relatives and wanted to understand if he was a racist as everyone said he was. He could have easily charmed her to forget about it, but then again, having experienced her resistance, thought it was probably safer to manipulate her from time to time with mere rhetoric and argumentations, which she seemed to be very fond of.
"However, since for the time being I won't be able to reach you at school, we'll have to meet here, in Knockturn Alley; best if before the sun sets, otherwise the street will be crowded and we'll have to move elsewhere. Please come whenever you can, for I think it will be a rewarding experience, and there's much still to be said about our family. Unfortunately, I have to go now-" Tom attempted to leave frantically, as he now needed room and time to think, but was stopped again by the two young maidens, still eager to make him despair.
"You mean just me? Or can Eileen come as well? She won't bother you, I promise: she deeply admires you and would like to-"
"You want me to teach you something, isn't it?" Tom blurted out interrupting her, when he realised he had been too straightforward and tried to correct himself "Sure I will! I will teach you, Eileen. I will teach you both, if you wish so. Ask me whatever you want and I shall be as exhaustive as I can. But then, even Knockturn Alley might be too exposed: I will check for other places, so that we'll be able to work in secrecy. Needless to say, don't tell anyone about all this, otherwise you'll fuel the baseless, ridicolous rumors that I'm, oh corrupting minds, plotting against the Muggles and the Ministry itself. Goodbye"
Finally Tom Disapparated before he could see their reaction, with a half-crooked smile on his face.
The two girls stood in silence for a few minutes, acknowledging what had been said and what they had done. Luckily, no-one followed them or looked for them, otherwise they would have got into serious trouble. Both were ecstatic and terrified at the same time, but Eileeen more the former than the latter, and Emmeline more the latter than the former.
"Do you think he is?" Eileen asked then, her eyes fixed on the thin fog engendered by his disappearance.
"I hope not..." Emmeline replied, horrified "He shouldn't be, but certainly he's not going to disclose anything to us: if we will find out, it'll be by ourselves..."
"I don't know. Maybe he will tell you, since you're his cousin" Eileen suggested, not being able to withhold her jealousy.
"Don't be silly, Eileen!" Emmeline snarled, bitterly "I'm not mature enough to be recruited and not in a very safe position, either. It takes much more than that to gain his trust!"
"Then that's what we'll do" Eileen exclaimed, her cheeks still flushed "We'll sneak out every time we leave school and come here in the afternoon!"
"Yes, about that: it's really time to get back now" Emmeline urged, starting to head out of Knockturn and to Diagon.
She was angry at Eileen for having a crush on someone they didn't even know yet and questioning, again, her real opinion on Muggles and Muggle-Borns. She knew she had to shrug it off, that it was all Minerva's fault, as she was the one who had suggested her being racist in the first place, but certainly she wasn't commited to prove her wrong.