Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, or characters, places, and events you recognise. I am not making money off this writing. JK Rowling owns Harry Potter (she isn't making money off my fanfiction, though) I own any OCs and the plot.
Tom goes to Hogwarts. Tom meets purebloods. Tom isn't a pureblood. Surprise!
I present before you, esteemed Potterhead and Reader of Fanfiction, chapter one of a story so great it will make you cringe and turn away shiver in anticipation for the next installment.
Chapter one: Money, Power, Blood
A line of children, another one. These ones await a House. The ones from before only wanted shelter.
The line flows into a puddle, a stream flowing into an ocean. This ocean is full of sharks, now.
"The spellwork's meant to be really good, but the charms on our Manor are better quality, really," says a blonde-haired boy to one of his companions. "Mother thinks Hogwarts is overrated, and wanted me to go to Beauxbatons like she did. But Father insisted – it does look much better, Father in the British Ministry and myself attending the British school. Gives him a bit more sway."
The boys gathered around him nodded. "I couldn't agree more, Abraxas," said one, dark hair falling in curls around his shoulders. "My own father sent Roxana to Beauxbatons, and Augustus will surely attend Durmstrung."
"Reinhard, is it true that Lady Lestrange is expecting another child?" inquired Abraxas, the blonde boy.
"Twins," Reinhard said. "Perhaps one of them might marry a sibling of yours?"
Abraxas smiled slightly. "I'm afraid those rumors must remain rumors."
A tall wizard appeared, and clapped his hands for their attention. "Please follow me," said Professor Dumbledore kindly, his eyes searching the crowd for one boy in particular, and, when they found him, they narrowed in disapproval.
Tom let himself meld into the line, his head up high and his back straight, as if he had not struggled to purchase second-hand robes – or perhaps they were even third-hand. It was as easy as slipping on a mask, it was yet another mask. He would be a picture-perfect pureblood heir like the others, if he were not a mudblood, if he had expensive boots and acromantula silk robes and an ancient ring on his finger.
The line entered a huge chamber, Tom looked around and was awed, his face was blank. The others were not so good, mouths gaping open and eyes popped wide in wonder. Are they even trying? Blonde Abraxas' face betrayed his own astonishment at the grandness of Hogwarts even as he eyed up Tom's second-hand robes and whispered, 'mudblood.'
The line seemed to evaporate, time moved so fast, and then -
"Riddle, Tom."
He could hear their voices, always, buzzing through the air, cutting through the magic of the place. "Riddle? What kind of name is Riddle?" "And 'Tom,' even worse." "Must be a mudblood." "He'll be no competition come exams, mark my words..."
He'd prove them all wrong. He was brilliant, a prodigy, he could hardly not prove them wrong.
One word echoes in his head again, though. Mudblood.
The hat brushes his head, and screams, "SLYTHERIN!"
Nobody talks to him during the feast. Headmaster Dippet made a brief speech, and the first-year Slytherins followed Prefect Dagworth-Granger to the common room. The password was pureblood.
There, Professor Slughorn introduced himself, as well as Head Girl Acietta Meliflua-Black. "I believe your younger sister has come to Hogwarts this year, is that right, Ms. Meliflua-Black?" he asked of her.
"Yes," said Acietta. "She is in Slytherin, the Worthiest of Houses, as are many of my cousins. Hello, Araminta, dear."
"Acietta," said Araminta. She was the loveliest eleven-year-old Tom had ever seen, with beautiful sea-green eyes and a melodious voice.
"Don't forget me!" called a girl from the corner, a few years older than Tom.
"I'll leave you to it, then," said Slughorn, and wandered away to greet returning students.
Acietta looked up to the girl in the corner. "Lucretia, everyone here knows of the noble birth you and I share, and those who don't are inconsequential. Listen up, firsties, this is important. This is Slytherin, not Gryffindor. You have been Sorted into the best of the four Houses at Hogwarts. Inside the Slytherin common room you may do what you will to each other, within reason and so long as you are not breaking any of the rules in the Slytherin Rulebook on the mantlepiece.
"Only the first five entries are rules, all the rest are guidelines that must only be followed if you want to survive. Outside the Slytherin common room we Slytherins are united. No Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Gryffindor may know of rivalry between Slytherins. If you need an ally in a house other than Slytherin Ravenclaws are your best option. If you can cultivate loyalty to Slytherin amongst the Hufflepuffs, you may do so."
"Any questions? No? Then I suggest you all go to bed – there is a curfew, after all. Boys, your dorms are up the staircase to the right, girls, left."
Blonde Abraxas lead the way up the stairs. There were three rooms for first-year boys and Tom shared his with Abraxas, the Lestrange boy, and two others. Each bed, Tom found, was ensconced in its own wooden cubicle, but these cubicles were huge and the wood was ancient and ornately carved. There was a door and a gaping window in each, and inside each cubicle there was a vast green and dark-brown four-poster bed with curtains around the edges, a simple desk, chair, and lamp (but even those were fancier than anything Tom had yet seen in his life) and there were glittering lights in the shape of stairs on the ceiling. Tom's trunk was at the food of his bed, with an odd mechanism that definitely wasn't his on top of it. There was a note.
No Slytherin should attend class with beaten or broken books. Place any book on this stand and even the most ill-treated books will look new.
Regards,
Prof. H. Slughorn, Potions Master and Head of Slytherin House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
"Wizardry," murmured Tom for not the first time. It was real – he was a wizard, he had magic, he was at a private school learning magic.
"Riddle," came a voice from behind him, and Tom turned his head to find that he'd left the door open behind him. Blonde Abraxas stood behind him, leering. "It's been a long time since we had a mudblood in Slytherin."
"You don't know I'm a mudblood," said Tom quietly.
"I don't know you're not," retorted Abraxas. "Riddle isn't even a wizarding name. You could be somebody's bastard, but what self-respecting pureblood would consort with muggles? Even if you aren't a mudblood yourself, you're the son of a mudblood, and that's just as bad. Filthy, a taint on Salazar Slytherin's noble name!"
"Salazar Slytherin," drawled Tom. "Famous parselmouth, Founder of Slytherin House?"
"The very same," sneered Abraxas. "But – how does a mudblood like you know what a parselmouth is?"
"I can read, Abraxas."
"Call me Malfoy!" snapped Abrax- Malfoy, bristling. "Or just shut up!" With that final comment, Malfoy stormed out.
Tom shut the door before turning to his trunk once again. He set the book restoration device (it had not come with a label telling him the proper name) on his desk, then pulled his textbooks – second-hand, all of them – from his trunk. He caressed the first, a well-worn-tome, with several suspicious purple-brown stains on the cover and sides of the pages, before setting it on the device.
Golden light enveloped the book, and it began to glow a delicate shade of rose, before fading away altogether, leaving a clean copy of The Ancient Art of Battle Magics on the device, no trace of the stains or the tears Tom's fingers had just brushed over.
Quickly, he set to restoring the rest of his books – it wouldn't do at all to appear less than careful with the valuable texts required for attendance at Hogwarts. Then, curious, he shrugged out of his school robe, bundled it up and placed it on the restoration device. The light surrounded it, faded, and the robe emerged looking just as good as new; just as good as the acromantula silk robes the other boys wore. He repeated the process with all his articles of clothing, right down to his shoes.
Tom laid his wand on the small table next to his bed, stacked his books on his desk, and retired for the night.
Tom dreamed of great serpents and a never-ending corridor, a man and a woman at the end, and a manor-house on a hill, of huddling in a bomb shelter, of being crammed into a tiny space, of being Tom.
Tom dreamed of lots of things, and wished for many things, too, and when he woke he desired to be a true Slytherin, and worried he was not.
Tom showered under cold water, and appeared in the common room a few minutes later, dressed smartly in his school uniform. The common room was empty but for Tom and the Head Girl, who was curled up in an armchair reading a book, and when she saw Tom she smiled. "The first first-year up. You must be Tom Riddle."
"You know who I am because I'm the only one you haven't meant before," he said. "Don't you."
"I do," she agreed. "I hope to get to know you better over the course of the next year."
Tom frowned. "But I'm a mudblood."
"Of course you're not a mudblood," said the Head Girl. "You are in Slytherin, after all. There is a reason you're here, and it's not to be Malfoy's exercise bag. Araminta was quite enchanted by you last night, Riddle."
It seemed as soon as the Head Girl spoke her name Araminta appeared. "Riddle," she said.
"Meliflua-Black," Tom said.
"You know my name," said Araminta.
"You know mine," Tom returned.
There was an uncomfortable silence, until Araminta broke it. "Please, call me Araminta."
"Then you must call me Tom."
Araminta blushed pink. "Tom. It seemed such an ugly, common name just yesterday, but you are neither – why, I think the name has become elegant and lovely by virtue of you having it."
"Oh, thank you, Araminta, but your name is ever so lovely, much more than mine ever could be," said Tom.
"I hate to interrupt the mating song of the lovebirds, but it is breakfast-time. Tom, wake the other first year boys, Araminta, wake the girls," said the Head Girl.
Tom climbed back up the stairs to the dormitories, calling through the doors, "wake up! Wake up, or you will be hungry!"
Loud complaints followed him back down the stairs to the common room, along with the occasional slur. A number of boys told him to 'go away, you filthy mudblood' but he figured he'd done the job.
Sure enough, twenty minutes later a group of disgruntled first-years, hair in disarray around their faces, stumbled blearily into the common room to join their older housemates, who'd gathered there in twos and threes.
"Please arrange yourselves according to year before we all walk down to breakfast. Seventh years in front, then sixth years, then fifth years, you get the picture. First years, you are last. You are responsible for staying with the group and not getting lost. All lined up? Good – follow me." The Head Girl stood in front of the line of students. Tom ended up pushed to the back, on the grounds that 'mudbloods go last.' Tom didn't disagree.
When the Slytherins filed into the Great Hall, their line split two ways, and they sat in age order with the seventh-years the closest to the professors, and the first-years the furthest away. "I'll be King soon," Tom heard Malfoy promise Lestrange, "and then we'll be up there."
"Suppose I wanted to be King?" Lestrange asked.
"I suppose you'd be eating your breakfast in the hospital wing, then," replied Malfoy, and he and Lestrange laughed.
"Boys," muttered the girl Tom was sitting next to. "Especially Malfoys and Lestranges – they think they're so great."
"They are powerful pureblood families," Tom reminded her.
"French pureblood families. We're in Britain, so my family has more power in Ministry matters. I'm Cassiopeia Black. The Malfoys, and Lestranges, and the Rosiers all came to Britain during the Conquest. The Blacks, however, emerged as a prominent Wizarding family after the Romans fell – Perseus the Black was a Roman soldier, a wizard of uncertain birth, and he had many children with many different wives. Most of his sons' lines died out after Lacerta Black, a young girl at the time, was fooling around with potions and accidentally created the Black Plague, and the only Blacks remaining today are the descendants of Perseus' son Auriga."
"How fascinating," said Tom.
"In fact," continued Cassiopeia, "I am named after Lacerta – Cassiopeia Lacerta Black. So who are you."
"I'm coming to Hogwarts under the name Tom Riddle," said Tom. "Say, what do you know about Salazar Slytherin's line?"
"Salazar Slytherin was one of the Hogwart's Founders. He had a son and a daughter, and for hundreds of years they were very rich, and very famous, and every one could speak Parseltongue, the-"
"Language of snakes?"
"Yes. The name disappeared when the only child of the current Lord Slytherin, a daughter, married a Guant. The line disappeared a hundred or so years ago when Gaunts stopped coming to Hogwarts. Two of the three last Gaunts are dead – Marvolo and his daughter… Mary, it might be. And nobody's contacted the last one in years."
"You seem to know a lot about Wizarding families," commented Tom.
"Oh yes! We Blacks start learning this stuff as toddlers!" Cassiopeia grinned. "So why are you asking about Slytherin."
Tom smiled. "I'm a parselmouth myself."
Cassiopeia's mouth fell open in shock. "You! Oh, that's wonderful! Are you engaged to anyone yet? You'll have to come around for tea one day, Mother and Father would love to meet you!"
"I'd love to meet the rest of your family," said Tom.
Araminta had switched seats and was now on Tom's other side. "I'm not engaged either, Tom," she said.
"Riddle wouldn't marry you," Cassiopeia said haughtily. "You're a bit… impure."
"I'm not marrying anyone," said Tom, "at least not right now, and if one of you rips the other's throat out I won't be marrying either of you."
"I never said anything about marriage!" said Araminta indignantly. Cassiopeia rolled her eyes and turned away to spread butter on her croissant. Tom finished his breakfast in silence.