Jaded

The orphanage was a crowded, grimy little house with three children sharing a bed and six beds crammed into each room. The food was foul and ill-cooked, the sheets rarely cleaned and a single new set of clothes given to each child once a year, often passed down from the older ones. The matron was fouler than the stink in the neglected toilets with a face like a pug dog and an attitude that would scare even Grindelwald into submission.

The school the orphans were sent to was little better. Thirty to forty students packed like sardines in a can into a classroom where the windows were either jammed shut or broken open, reducing the students to icicles in winter and puddles in summer. It seemed physically impossible for the teachers to smile and they all took a malicious sort of glee in torturing their students. The principle was the male equivalent of the Matron, except he was armed with a cane.

Tom hated the orphanage. He hated the school. He hated the Matron and the Principle and the teachers and all of the other, mindless children doing what they were told, rebelling in exactly the same ways every other child does and getting punished in the same, boring ways. The only times the other children had any imagination it was when they were coming up with ways to torture him. Tom hated that. But, it was all that Tom knew.

Dumped on the doorstep with a label with his name on it, like a lost waitor or waitress; 'Hello, my name is Tom Marvolo Riddle, please feel free to beat me up for your amusement.' The Matron said that he'd still been wet from being born when she'd found him. She told him that he should be grateful for the charity they gave. For the leaking, tumbledown roof over his head, for the hand-me-down, tattered clothes, for the flea bitten, ragged sheets, for the broken bed he had to share with two other boys, who always kicked him out. For the floor, then, she said.

There were so many things that he should be thankful for. There was only one thing in the entire world that Tom was thankful for. And that was Evan. Evan James.

Tom had been seven when Evan started going to the same school as him. The boy had been shoved through the front door by a whale of a man and after a harsh word, he had been left there. Evan looked as though he was about five, at the oldest, and had the largest, most beautiful big green eyes you ever saw. Well, he would have done had one of them not been surrounded by a large, purple bruise and swollen shut. No one asked about the black eye, the same way they never asked about anything.

For a long time Tom and Evan didn't talk. They barely saw each other. They shared the same class, but with forty other seven year olds crammed into the same room it was not hard just to not bump into each other. In fact, with Evan avoiding any human contact altogether, shrinking into the shadows and trying to disappear into the wallpaper, it was all too easy to forget Evan existed altogether.

It was at lunch time, three weeks after Evan's arrival that the green eyed boy made his first proper public appearance. Tom had found himself, once again, surrounded by a group of large, mean boys who had decided he was overdue for his lesson in learning his place. The first raised his fist when suddenly Evan was standing in front of Tom. The fist swung down heavily and an ominous crack resounded around the playground.

Evan didn't even flinch. He waited until the fist was swung back again and, calm as you please, slipped under the much larger boy's arm and hooked it under in an inescapable arm lock. No one heard what Evan said to the larger boy, but moments later the arm was released, the boy nodded once at Evan before sauntering off with his mates, ignoring Tom completely now.

The small boy only then raised his hands to his face and placed them over his nose, that had been bleeding profusely. Then the hands slipped down, blood free, and Tom could see that the nose which had been pushed slightly to one side by the force of the blow was now perfectly aligned.

'I'm Evan,' the boy said, offering his hand to Tom.

Tom sneered, ignored the hand and hissed, 'I don't need your protection. If you know what's good for you, you'll keep away from me.'

Evan shrugged and smiled, shoving his hands in his pockets. 'OK,' he agreed and, with that, wondered off.

Written: 13th Feb 2009
Chances of continuation: possible

Feel free to use this piece of writing for whatever the hell you want, so long as you credit me (either this account or my main one - Calistabelle) and let me know what you do with it.

Much love,
Cal