Lorraine had always been a shy child. It was pretty much in her genetic
makeup. Her father was a short, bookish man with thick glasses that were
usually peering above a heavy spell book or magical treatise, and a quiet,
rich voice that put one in mind of velvet drapes, or sheets of heavy paper.
Her mother was a plump woman who loved to knit and embroider, and as a
result, Lorraine's memories of her home always included a ball of yarn
sitting on a piece of furniture, or tangled around many of them.
Currently, her insides felt as knotted as one of her mother's failed
projects. She was next in line for the Sorting Hat, and she felt certain that
the Hat would burst out laughing once it got a look inside her head. Not only
was she nervous to find out where she would be spending the next seven of her
school years, she was afraid to be away from home and family, without any
idea of who her classmates were. She had never been very popular at her
grammar school, with its cliques and bullies.
Her name was called, ("Lorraine Meadows!") and she stepped up
reluctantly, pulled the dingy hat over her head, and waited for the raucous
catcalls to begin. Instead, a gentle voice began to mutter to itself.
"Lorraine, ey? Gentle, trusting, still a little shy I see. Well, you'll
make a good mother or teacher someday, I can see that, and a few weeks here
at Hogwarts should help you be a little more outgoing. You're a Hufflepuff,
my dear, and the term'll fly by before you know it."
She removed the elderly hat from her head, and with it, her nervousness
and tension seemed to melt away like wax in the face of the sun. Maybe
Hogwarts wouldn't be so bad after all. Lorraine glided over to the Hufflepuff
table, careful to take a seat distant from the Fat Friar. Her fears had
abated somewhat since her assignation to a House, but not enough that she
wanted to risk sitting next to a ghost.
Names of her soon-to be comrades and roomates floated around her as the
line of new first years diminished, and before Lorraine knew it, the older
students were leading the hordes of slightly bewildered kids back to their
new Common Rooms. She got up to follow, and a jolt of panic flooded her as
her foot caught a loose cobblestone, and she tripped headlong to the floor....
...or would, have, if she hadn't suddenly found herself clinging to a
tall boy who had caught her before she could humiliate herself. A smoky red
blush began to stalk its way up her neck, as she looked up at the gallant
second-year who had caught her.
His cool grey eyes twinkled mischievously at her, and the blush raged
somewhere above her ears.
"Watch your step, pet," he said, and then was gone into the throng before
she could even thank him.
In a sort of daze, she asked the girl next to her, whom she recognized as
an older Hufflepuff, who the boy that was up ahead was. He had somehow
managed to make it to the stairs ahead of everyone, which, frankly only added
to his mystique.
"Oh. him? He's a Slytherin, Tom Riddle, I think his name is."
"Tom Riddle," she thought. The name filled her lungs and sang through her
veins, as she fell instantly and irrevocably in love.
* * *
The Sorting Hat had been right. By halfway through September, Lorraine
had settled into the rhythms of Hogwarts, as had most of her fellow
Hufflepuffs.
Looking around her dormitory, she reflected that before she had come to
Hogwarts, she thought that the Hufflepuff common room and dormitories were
the grandest rooms she had ever seen. Quaint floral patterns dominated the
girls' dormitory, with plenty of windows to let in sunlight and fresh air.
The Head of Hufflepuff, Professor Nibelungen, maintained that those two
things were the secret to happiness and health.
Nibelungen was the Herbology teacher, who was here on an exchange program
from Sweden. Half the boys in school were in love with her, especially the
Muggle-borns, who swore that she looked exactly like Ingrid Bergman. Being
from a wizard family, Lorraine had no idea who Ingrid Bergman was, but even
she could see that Brunhilde Nibelungen was a beautiful woman.
Yes, Herbology was Lorraine's favorite course. It would have been her
favorite course even if the teacher was a hag with a temper shorter than a
midget in flats. Herbology would have been her favorite course even if she
would not have been able to tell salient comfrey from Southern Comfort.
The main reason why Herbology was the highlight of Lorraine's day was the
fact that the second-year Slytherins were the class directly after hers. That
meant that she got to see Tom Riddle for at least a minute each day. A moment
a day was hardly enough to form a relationship with him, but it was enough
for her to drink in the sight of him, to keep his image in the forefront of
her mind, to keep his voice on constant reply in her head. Occasionally he
would give her a brief smile or civil nod of recognization, and those days
she seemed to positively glow.
Her most exciting day at Hogwarts yet had been when a freak cloudburst
had hit just as the Slytherins were arriving and the Hufflepuffs were due for
Defense Against The Dark Arts. Nibelungen had said, "There's nothing for it
but to keep you all here until it passes. Pack in, all."
Even remembering the day brought a guilty smile to her face. Lorraine had
somehow accidentally-on-purpose squished herself in next to Tom and a few of
his cronies, praying that he wouldn't recognize her as the clumsy girl from
the first day.
However, some prayers are destined to go unanswered. Tom's idle gaze fell
on her, and he smiled that rare smile. "Hey...I know you....You're the one
that fell into my arms the first day at the Sorting, aren't you?"
She could feel that her face was rapidly becoming the color of the Rosy
Sparkweed seedling on the bench behind her, but she gathered her resolve and
managed to nod sheepishly. "I'm a terminal klutz." Her inner voice, easily
mortified and hard to silence once it got started on one of its many tirades,
spoke up:
"STUPID! Why did you say that?! He'll think you're an utter oaf!"
Riddle laughed gently. "I doubt that. You haven't managed to lose any
visible body parts from the Venemous Tentacula yet, and everyone knows that's
the sign of a real klutz."
Lorraine remembered feeling her insides go to water at the very *idea* of
Tom Riddle and any of her body parts in the same breath. From some distant
corner of her consciousness, she noted Nibelungen bawling out two Slytherin
boys who had been teasing a rare shrub of sapient pearwood, causing it to
snarl at them.
"I s-s-uppose that would be," she ventured, then immediately cursed
herself for the damned stutter that turned up whenever she was feeling
particularly excited or out of her element.
At that moment, the sun returned sullenly back to its post, and the brief
shower abated enough for Nibelungen to excuse the first-years to their
classes. Drawing a brief, shaky breath, she got up enough courage to bid him
goodbye. "I'll see you around, then?"
But, at that point he had already turned around to go to his bench and
take out his pruning equipment, and Lorraine was sure that he hadn't heard
her. She sighed, and turned to leave. Her class was already a quarter of the
way back to the main castle, and she'd need to catch up. They were already
late to DADA, and Hufflepuff didn't need points taken away due to her.
She quickly gathered her books and walked hurriedly towards the door.
However, to get there, she had to pass by Tom's bench. As she made her way
between the densely spaced benches and foliage, he looked up at her, winked
and whispered, "Beware those killer cobblestones!"
Lorraine smiled timidly at him as she passed, and then, once she passed
through the greenhouse portal, broke into a run. It was partly to catch up
with her distant classmates, but mostly to use up the pure adrenaline and
energy she felt just being around him.
As she ducked under a low-hanging branch, it showered her with droplets,
and she grinned up at the quickly retiring rainclouds, thanking them for
causing the unexpected interlude with the boy she adored.
* * *
The rest of Lorraine's first year passed by without much activity to
remark upon. The Ravenclaws carried the House Championship, followed closely
by the Gryffindors. The Slytherins accepted third without much grace, and
when the awards were announced, several whispers and pointed looks were shot
towards Patrick Malfoy, who had managed to achieve the dubious honor of
losing Slytherin the most points it had ever lost in one fell swoop. He had
obtained a large quantity of baking soda from the kitchen, and poured it into
Professor Phytolacca's extremely acidic Transparency Potion. As one could
predict, his prank called for "clearly drastic punishment!" as Phytolacca had
rather ironically put it.
At the beginning of term, Lorraine was mystified as to how she would be
able to make it through the year. But come time for summer holidays, Lorraine
couldn't imagine not waking up in her cozy four-poster, or not assembling in
the Great Hall for meals. Most of all, she had no idea how she was going to
make it through the summer without seeing Tom at all.
When Caroline Meadows came to pick up her daughter from King's Cross, she
noted a change in Lorraine as well. She couldn't tell whether it was
something specific, or just the polish and increased independence that came
from going to boarding school for a year. Throughout the ride home, she
reflected that her little girl was almost 12 now, older than she had pictured
her being. Still, time passed on, and the sweaters that she knitted for her
had grown increasingly bigger. Caroline wondered whether she should tell her
daughter about...well, the way the world worked. The birds and the bees. One
look at Lorraine out in the fields behind their cottage picking flowers drove
that thought out of her mind. She was much too young for that. There would be
plenty of time for that later.
Lorraine's mother would have been surprised enough to drop a stitch on
the Afghan she was making -- something she hadn't done for twenty years-- if
she had known what her daughter was thinking about as she picked flowers, and
indeed, all the summer.
The young girl's mind and heart had a permanent groove etched in them,
one that had been worn into them by constant repetition. When Lorraine first
saw Tom, she had fallen in love with him, and that emotion would never be
undone.
A/N: My, my, my. Gee, believe it or not, this isn't my first fic! Although,
my last submission was a good 6 months ago, so it may count as a fresh start.
I have a minor fascination with the women in Lord Voldemort's life, as you
can see. This is my newest speculation, and reviews are appreciated. More to
come soon!
Thanks to:
Peeves (known in other lives as Jeremy), for many, many things. (including,
among others, posting this, beta-ing and not being a chimp)
Morrigan for beta-ing when possible and for being generally supportive and a
truly enlightened and enlightening person.
CLS-- sorry that I lost touch. If you review this, email me!
All of you marvelous writers who make life and daily FFN pilgrimages
worthwhile!
Also to the Evol Femmes, JKR (who Riddle belongs to) and the various friends,
aquaintances and sworn enemies my characters are based on.
If you've gotten this far, remember this: Eagles may soar, but weasels don't
get sucked into jet engines. Ciao!
makeup. Her father was a short, bookish man with thick glasses that were
usually peering above a heavy spell book or magical treatise, and a quiet,
rich voice that put one in mind of velvet drapes, or sheets of heavy paper.
Her mother was a plump woman who loved to knit and embroider, and as a
result, Lorraine's memories of her home always included a ball of yarn
sitting on a piece of furniture, or tangled around many of them.
Currently, her insides felt as knotted as one of her mother's failed
projects. She was next in line for the Sorting Hat, and she felt certain that
the Hat would burst out laughing once it got a look inside her head. Not only
was she nervous to find out where she would be spending the next seven of her
school years, she was afraid to be away from home and family, without any
idea of who her classmates were. She had never been very popular at her
grammar school, with its cliques and bullies.
Her name was called, ("Lorraine Meadows!") and she stepped up
reluctantly, pulled the dingy hat over her head, and waited for the raucous
catcalls to begin. Instead, a gentle voice began to mutter to itself.
"Lorraine, ey? Gentle, trusting, still a little shy I see. Well, you'll
make a good mother or teacher someday, I can see that, and a few weeks here
at Hogwarts should help you be a little more outgoing. You're a Hufflepuff,
my dear, and the term'll fly by before you know it."
She removed the elderly hat from her head, and with it, her nervousness
and tension seemed to melt away like wax in the face of the sun. Maybe
Hogwarts wouldn't be so bad after all. Lorraine glided over to the Hufflepuff
table, careful to take a seat distant from the Fat Friar. Her fears had
abated somewhat since her assignation to a House, but not enough that she
wanted to risk sitting next to a ghost.
Names of her soon-to be comrades and roomates floated around her as the
line of new first years diminished, and before Lorraine knew it, the older
students were leading the hordes of slightly bewildered kids back to their
new Common Rooms. She got up to follow, and a jolt of panic flooded her as
her foot caught a loose cobblestone, and she tripped headlong to the floor....
...or would, have, if she hadn't suddenly found herself clinging to a
tall boy who had caught her before she could humiliate herself. A smoky red
blush began to stalk its way up her neck, as she looked up at the gallant
second-year who had caught her.
His cool grey eyes twinkled mischievously at her, and the blush raged
somewhere above her ears.
"Watch your step, pet," he said, and then was gone into the throng before
she could even thank him.
In a sort of daze, she asked the girl next to her, whom she recognized as
an older Hufflepuff, who the boy that was up ahead was. He had somehow
managed to make it to the stairs ahead of everyone, which, frankly only added
to his mystique.
"Oh. him? He's a Slytherin, Tom Riddle, I think his name is."
"Tom Riddle," she thought. The name filled her lungs and sang through her
veins, as she fell instantly and irrevocably in love.
* * *
The Sorting Hat had been right. By halfway through September, Lorraine
had settled into the rhythms of Hogwarts, as had most of her fellow
Hufflepuffs.
Looking around her dormitory, she reflected that before she had come to
Hogwarts, she thought that the Hufflepuff common room and dormitories were
the grandest rooms she had ever seen. Quaint floral patterns dominated the
girls' dormitory, with plenty of windows to let in sunlight and fresh air.
The Head of Hufflepuff, Professor Nibelungen, maintained that those two
things were the secret to happiness and health.
Nibelungen was the Herbology teacher, who was here on an exchange program
from Sweden. Half the boys in school were in love with her, especially the
Muggle-borns, who swore that she looked exactly like Ingrid Bergman. Being
from a wizard family, Lorraine had no idea who Ingrid Bergman was, but even
she could see that Brunhilde Nibelungen was a beautiful woman.
Yes, Herbology was Lorraine's favorite course. It would have been her
favorite course even if the teacher was a hag with a temper shorter than a
midget in flats. Herbology would have been her favorite course even if she
would not have been able to tell salient comfrey from Southern Comfort.
The main reason why Herbology was the highlight of Lorraine's day was the
fact that the second-year Slytherins were the class directly after hers. That
meant that she got to see Tom Riddle for at least a minute each day. A moment
a day was hardly enough to form a relationship with him, but it was enough
for her to drink in the sight of him, to keep his image in the forefront of
her mind, to keep his voice on constant reply in her head. Occasionally he
would give her a brief smile or civil nod of recognization, and those days
she seemed to positively glow.
Her most exciting day at Hogwarts yet had been when a freak cloudburst
had hit just as the Slytherins were arriving and the Hufflepuffs were due for
Defense Against The Dark Arts. Nibelungen had said, "There's nothing for it
but to keep you all here until it passes. Pack in, all."
Even remembering the day brought a guilty smile to her face. Lorraine had
somehow accidentally-on-purpose squished herself in next to Tom and a few of
his cronies, praying that he wouldn't recognize her as the clumsy girl from
the first day.
However, some prayers are destined to go unanswered. Tom's idle gaze fell
on her, and he smiled that rare smile. "Hey...I know you....You're the one
that fell into my arms the first day at the Sorting, aren't you?"
She could feel that her face was rapidly becoming the color of the Rosy
Sparkweed seedling on the bench behind her, but she gathered her resolve and
managed to nod sheepishly. "I'm a terminal klutz." Her inner voice, easily
mortified and hard to silence once it got started on one of its many tirades,
spoke up:
"STUPID! Why did you say that?! He'll think you're an utter oaf!"
Riddle laughed gently. "I doubt that. You haven't managed to lose any
visible body parts from the Venemous Tentacula yet, and everyone knows that's
the sign of a real klutz."
Lorraine remembered feeling her insides go to water at the very *idea* of
Tom Riddle and any of her body parts in the same breath. From some distant
corner of her consciousness, she noted Nibelungen bawling out two Slytherin
boys who had been teasing a rare shrub of sapient pearwood, causing it to
snarl at them.
"I s-s-uppose that would be," she ventured, then immediately cursed
herself for the damned stutter that turned up whenever she was feeling
particularly excited or out of her element.
At that moment, the sun returned sullenly back to its post, and the brief
shower abated enough for Nibelungen to excuse the first-years to their
classes. Drawing a brief, shaky breath, she got up enough courage to bid him
goodbye. "I'll see you around, then?"
But, at that point he had already turned around to go to his bench and
take out his pruning equipment, and Lorraine was sure that he hadn't heard
her. She sighed, and turned to leave. Her class was already a quarter of the
way back to the main castle, and she'd need to catch up. They were already
late to DADA, and Hufflepuff didn't need points taken away due to her.
She quickly gathered her books and walked hurriedly towards the door.
However, to get there, she had to pass by Tom's bench. As she made her way
between the densely spaced benches and foliage, he looked up at her, winked
and whispered, "Beware those killer cobblestones!"
Lorraine smiled timidly at him as she passed, and then, once she passed
through the greenhouse portal, broke into a run. It was partly to catch up
with her distant classmates, but mostly to use up the pure adrenaline and
energy she felt just being around him.
As she ducked under a low-hanging branch, it showered her with droplets,
and she grinned up at the quickly retiring rainclouds, thanking them for
causing the unexpected interlude with the boy she adored.
* * *
The rest of Lorraine's first year passed by without much activity to
remark upon. The Ravenclaws carried the House Championship, followed closely
by the Gryffindors. The Slytherins accepted third without much grace, and
when the awards were announced, several whispers and pointed looks were shot
towards Patrick Malfoy, who had managed to achieve the dubious honor of
losing Slytherin the most points it had ever lost in one fell swoop. He had
obtained a large quantity of baking soda from the kitchen, and poured it into
Professor Phytolacca's extremely acidic Transparency Potion. As one could
predict, his prank called for "clearly drastic punishment!" as Phytolacca had
rather ironically put it.
At the beginning of term, Lorraine was mystified as to how she would be
able to make it through the year. But come time for summer holidays, Lorraine
couldn't imagine not waking up in her cozy four-poster, or not assembling in
the Great Hall for meals. Most of all, she had no idea how she was going to
make it through the summer without seeing Tom at all.
When Caroline Meadows came to pick up her daughter from King's Cross, she
noted a change in Lorraine as well. She couldn't tell whether it was
something specific, or just the polish and increased independence that came
from going to boarding school for a year. Throughout the ride home, she
reflected that her little girl was almost 12 now, older than she had pictured
her being. Still, time passed on, and the sweaters that she knitted for her
had grown increasingly bigger. Caroline wondered whether she should tell her
daughter about...well, the way the world worked. The birds and the bees. One
look at Lorraine out in the fields behind their cottage picking flowers drove
that thought out of her mind. She was much too young for that. There would be
plenty of time for that later.
Lorraine's mother would have been surprised enough to drop a stitch on
the Afghan she was making -- something she hadn't done for twenty years-- if
she had known what her daughter was thinking about as she picked flowers, and
indeed, all the summer.
The young girl's mind and heart had a permanent groove etched in them,
one that had been worn into them by constant repetition. When Lorraine first
saw Tom, she had fallen in love with him, and that emotion would never be
undone.
A/N: My, my, my. Gee, believe it or not, this isn't my first fic! Although,
my last submission was a good 6 months ago, so it may count as a fresh start.
I have a minor fascination with the women in Lord Voldemort's life, as you
can see. This is my newest speculation, and reviews are appreciated. More to
come soon!
Thanks to:
Peeves (known in other lives as Jeremy), for many, many things. (including,
among others, posting this, beta-ing and not being a chimp)
Morrigan for beta-ing when possible and for being generally supportive and a
truly enlightened and enlightening person.
CLS-- sorry that I lost touch. If you review this, email me!
All of you marvelous writers who make life and daily FFN pilgrimages
worthwhile!
Also to the Evol Femmes, JKR (who Riddle belongs to) and the various friends,
aquaintances and sworn enemies my characters are based on.
If you've gotten this far, remember this: Eagles may soar, but weasels don't
get sucked into jet engines. Ciao!