A/N: This world belongs to JKR.
Written for The Houses Competition by MoonlightForgotten. Necessary information is at the bottom.
When Security Shatters
There is an uncomfortable uncertainty that breeds when what we think we know is suddenly disproved. When the rhythmic movements of a life we've always lived are suddenly jarred and we suddenly see through the illusions we've learned to believe. Where my colleagues have seen excitement and the gleaming eyes of children who finally fit in, I have always seen the tragedy of it all. For no child is the realization that the world they've known is a lie an easy one. This was particularly true of Tom Marvolo Riddle.
He was small when he came to Hogwarts, a dark parody to the larger-than-life monster he would become. I was often applauded for being the only figure of sufficient strength to counter the boy, and I wonder how many people tricked themselves into forgetting that I was just an old man with a fondness for socks and earmuffs. When I visited Tom in his orphanage, he was happy to discover the Muggle world was not his world. At least at first.
He realized quickly that there was something uncomfortable with wrangling the boundary between Muggle and Wizard, between life and death, between mere mortal and something much more dangerous. He was, of course, an excellent student, and might have done well in Ravenclaw had he ever learned to value knowledge for its intrinsic value. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
It wasn't until after Hogwarts, when he'd become a bit more than just a man or just a wizard, that Tom finally went back to the orphanage where he'd tormented so many others. As he walked into his former childhood bedroom, he undoubtedly was filled with the same sorts of feelings that assaulted him when he left the last time. There was a perfectly sound wardrobe in the corner, bearing no signs of the fire I'd lit in it. There was a perfectly neat bed, bearing no signs of the tears he'd spilled into it. And there was a perfectly quiet stillness, bearing no signs of the screams that had pierced it.
It is impossible to think Tom Riddle did not break when he entered this room. It is impossible to think that he even considered letting it remain, and the ruins left now serve as a demonstration of his anger. Each of us reacts differently to the piercing sound of our security shattering, and Tom Riddle reacted violently. I can't say I don't understand.
As I walked into my own former childhood bedroom, the place I'd shared with Aberforth and worked in with Gellert Grindelwald, the place I'd lived and loved and lost, I couldn't help feeling a bit violent myself. The loss of security is the wiping away of an image we'd always suspected of falsehood, the clearing of an illusion. We open our eyes to the world like we wake from a dream, and the funny thing is it happens more than once.
For the boys and girls who come to Hogwarts, it happens immediately. Most of them don't realize until graduation, when it happens again, and they realize they're leaving a world of magic for a world that is both magical and mundane. They must, inevitably, spend their lives in a type of hiding, away from the Muggles they perhaps began their lives with.
For each of us, it happens as we reach new milestones and discover that what we thought we knew is rarely what is actually true. For me, it happened as I plummeted from my own tower in a shock of green light, the faces of a man I had let down and a boy I had betrayed swimming in my face. But what do I know? I was just an old man before I died.
House: Ravenclaw
Category: Themed (Security)
Prompt: As he/she/name walked into their former childhood bedroom, [Sentence starter]
W/C: 623