A/N: Written for the Fanfiction Idol Competition. Possibly the weirdest—and probably the worst—thing I've ever written. Honest opinions, please!
SOUNDTRACK: Fear by Sarah McLachlan
Disclaimer: Finally, I remember. Gosh. No es mio.
EDIT: Now Beta'd by the lovely Hermoine Granger-Weasley! Thank you!
Warning: This is dark. It contains mentions of adult themes which, while not graphic, may be triggering. Also, this is an AU. Please use discretion before reading.
:nihil omnibus omnia introitus:
i.
Tom Riddle is born on the wooden slats of an orphanage cot during New Year's Eve of 1926. He's a beautiful baby, almost ethereal, all pale and dark and soft. For all that there's a certain something off about the boy, perhaps the angle of the eyes or the darkness of the red smeared on his skin. He may grow to be an angel, or maybe the devil incarnate, but for now he fusses when cold and cries until he's fed. If there's one thing he's not, it's abnormal.
ii.
Tom is two when he first understands what it's like to feel alone. Adorable he may be, but ragged orphans swell the streets and stream into the orphanage daily as the war increases. Mrs. Cole and her helpers are needed elsewhere, busy showing the affection and care he now lacks to the newcomers. He sits on his recently acquired wooden bed, because beds are for big kids, pulling out splinters from when Billy Stubbs pushed him and Tom grabbed onto the too-old door frame. The shards of wood leave him with bloodstained hands and prints on the yellowing sheets. That night he sings "Happy Birthday" to himself and hums to fill the forgotten spaces between the words.
iii.
Tom is three when he learns his own name. A man comes and visits, dressed in a fancy black suit and shoes with heels like a girl's. Watching him pace up and down the line of children, Tom's never seen anybody so nice looking and wants desperately to impress him. He looks up and smiles but the man with the shiny shoes, shiny black like Tom's hair, wants a little girl instead and Tom's left with a lingering feeling of discomfort. Sara Ann strokes his soft head and says that he'll have better luck next time. For weeks afterward Tom feels the phantom imprint of her fingers running up and down, up and down his skull. It's not a nice feeling.
iv.
Tom is four when he decides he doesn't like the other children. The orphanage is full of them, squalling babies and muddy little girls and boys who are loud, loud, loud and leave echoes in his ears when he retreats to the quiet grassy knoll he found just outside the orphanage. Then there are the other children, his age, but only a few because most have been adopted long ago. There are still older children like Alexis Hendricks and Tom-the-twelve-year-old but they're too tall with twisted, sour faces. The matron tells him to wait a few years and he'll look like that too when he's older and more resentful. Tom nods and doesn't bother telling her about the afternoons they spend letting out their resentment on him with a stick, or fists if he's lucky. After all, she sees the bruises and it's no business of his if she just doesn't care.
v.
Tom is six when he is passed over for adoption the fifth time. Each visit he's combed his hair and made sure to scrub his hands, looking as inviting as he could, but nobody ever wanted him. Sometimes he was "sweet, but not what they had in mind" or "just a tad sullen". This time he's passed over by a particularly unfriendly couple for being a "scrawny little lad." It hurts less now than it did the first time. It's his birthday again and for the first time he remembers every word to the song. He sings it alone, hearing the echoes of his voice as they bounce off brick walls. He's beginning to hate the silence.
vi.
Tom is seven when he decides he's better off alone anyway.
vii.
Tom is eight when Jonathan Blake pulls him behind the orphanage during coal duty. The bigger boy shoves his face into the wall before kissing his bloodied lips, whispering that he's beautiful like that. Tom doesn't wince when he feels his skin tear and moisture soak down his front. The blood is warm and oddly comforting, satin like the stones at the bottom of a lake and Sara Ann's fingers through his hair. Afterward, he wipes his mouth and returns to his room. Nobody asks him what happened.
viii.
Tom is nine when he trips down the stairs and shatters his right arm. He's broken fingers and ribs before but never so badly, and the pain is excruciating. He tunes it out and focuses instead on the glistening white shards of bone splitting the skin. There's blood, growing puddles and trickles snaking down his arm, as an older girl screams for Mrs. Cole. The matron says money's too tight for a visit from the doctor and wraps his wrist in strips of graying cloth soaked in wine. He never regains full use of his hand.
ix.
Tom is ten when Peter Schews starts coming into his room at night. He's so lonely that when the older boy asks for him he doesn't mind. Not much.
x.
Tom is eleven when he decides enough is enough and begins locking the door to his room at night. He doesn't remember to celebrate his birthday because he's too busy looking over his shoulder and hearing footsteps in the silence.
xi.
Tom is twelve when the lock on his door breaks. Jonathan is gone by now, eighteen and kicked out on the streets, but Peter is not. The painful nightly visits start up again until Tom loses his temper and jams Peter's hand with a long nail from the wooden bed, watching as the boy-almost-man stumbles out bleeding. He's strangely entranced by the dark, dark red of the circle punched through the palm. It reminds him of dusky skies and emptiness and long lonely nights, and swollen lips and broken arms.
xii.
Tom is still twelve when Peter Schews falls ill with fever. Mrs. Cole scrounges up her money until their milk is so watered-down it's almost clear and the children skip a few days of bread, but even the doctor cannot save the boy's life. The jagged wound in his palm, obviously from some sort of rusted metal, is too badly infected. Peter dies and Tom knows he's a murderer.
xiii.
Tom is thirteen when he first tells his secret. He's older now, barely missed, and spends most afternoons in the gloom just behind the building, watching a squirrel build its nest. One day he cracks and speaks to it, whispering of his guilt and the shocked look in Peter's eyes and the iron taste of blood and Sara Ann's fingers slipping through his hair. The animal looks at him with dark eyes, dark like Peter's blood, that dim quickly when it's lying still in death. Tom wipes his now-bloody hands on the rough grass and thinks that he can't afford to trust at all.
xiv.
Tom is thirteen when he finally bothers to learn how to write. A new inhabitant of the orphanage, Bennett, offers, so Tom learns each letter until he knows the entire alphabet and then moves on to words. The two begin a tentative friendship until the day Bennett stumbles into a snake while out fishing and is bitten. He dies in the other boy's arms and Tom screams in rage but the snake can't understand him. He cries for the first time in years, drying his cheeks before returning to the orphanage. He writes a single word on Bennett's grave.
xv.
Tom is fourteen when he starts having dreams, unearthly black backgrounds with whorls of shiny red. He sees the staring faces of Peter and Bennett and hears the echoes of children crying and feels Sara Ann's delicate fingers running through his hair.
xvi.
Tom is fourteen when he dreams of a man, a fierce, sharp man with cruel eyes and an auburn beard. He dreams of long dark robes and gray brick walls and wands that shoot bloody streaks of light. He dreams of names and lives and deaths, and wakes with the feeling that he lost out on something vital.
xvii.
Tom is fourteen when he realizes that only he can see the small door and grungy windows leading into a pub in the depths of London. He reaches for the handle but his hand passes through it, wraith-like, and staring at the place he cannot enter Tom suddenly knows what he's been missing.
xviii.
Tom is fifteen when he corners a young girl heading towards the invisible door. He blusters his way into her confidence until she explains everything, holding out a rich cream-colored letter with a wax seal, and suddenly Tom understands that he, too, was meant for this magic only for whatever reason has been denied. He wants to kill her for having what he lacks but instead he watches her go, imagining power seeping into his blood.
xix.
Tom is fifteen when he learns of the failed attempt to abort the baby sixteen years ago, one last plea Merope Gaunt made for life to keep her. He learns of the poison she willingly drank and the way she bled and the way he was killed before he ever got the chance to live and somehow, somehow, lived when it was too late for his mother to sacrifice him for her. He learns of this ultimate act of selfishness and understands that his magic saved his life, draining hers; his magic made him a murderer long before he knew and his magic was used up and dried from that one act.
xx.
Tom is fifteen when he stands atop a cliff, one hand stiff and clawed. Scars streak his body bloody and the bruises on his arms will never fade. He is fifteen when he steps off the cliff, crippled boy, bird with a broken wing who cannot fly, falling to the rocks below.
xxi.
Tom will stay fifteen forever because a world without magic is not any world at all.
finis.