Hey! This was for the OC challenge on the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges forum, I hope you enjoy it!

It was a ramshackle place, the orphanage. Made of crumbling bricks and covered with overgrown ivy, it looked set to collapse any second. Inside, two children stood around a table, both grinning manically. The first was a boy who couldn't have been older then thirteen, but whose eyes were dark and weary, as if they had seen too many bad things already and were bored of it.

The other, a girl, with mousy blonde hair and a small frame, was smiling at him, face alight with pleasure and youthfulness.

She only looked 5 or 6 but when her shining eyes met his you could see he was her perfect role-model.

None of the other children were joining in their game, the elder ones guiding those younger away with a firm hand and a wary glance in the pair's direction.

Not even the employees seemed to be at ease with the boy, trying to urge the little girl away from him.

('Madeleine, come play princesses with the normal children.')

But she stayed by him, laughing as he played his mind games.

When he went off to his school Madeleine was all alone. In the other children's opinions she was guilty by association, and they were never any nearer to her then they could help. She couldn't write to him, no one at the orphanage knew the address (no one at the orphanage knew if there was a address). But she would be alright; she was fine, because he would always come back for her.

It was that day, he was 15, she had just turned 8, that he told her he wasn't coming back again.

('Maddie, I'm sorry, I have to leave, I can't stay here any longer, I have things to do.')

When she had started crying he looked into her eyes, whooshed into her mind. When he had blinked and stopped the connection, she was smiling again.

('You won't go Tom. You won't leave me alone with the different children. I know you won't.')

As she stared at him with her trust filled eyes, he turned and walked out the door without another word.

Even after five years had passed Madeleine still waited, was still firm in her belief that he would be back.

On this night she was in her room, writing the letters she found obligatory, but that she knew he would never read. Suddenly there was a crash from the ground floor. Mrs Cole would never be up this late, and nor would any of the other carers. After crawling off her bed, and being careful that Hayley, her room-mate wouldn't wake, she crept out the half open door.

A light was faintly glowing down the hallway, which was unusual, because the orphanage only had one working light, situated on the other side of the building. Shrugging off the nervous feeling now resting on her shoulders, Madeleine continued down the stairs.

Suddenly, she stopped. She could hear footsteps in the distance, a gentle pitter-patter of someone who did not care if they were heard.

The intruder turned the corner, and began to walk in Madeleine's direction. Her breaths were now coming out in short gasps, her eyes were tight shut and she shivered slightly in terror.

She heard a gasp, and swivelled around. The stranger was staring straight at her, and the face she saw was familiar, yet haggard.

'Tom?'

'Madeleine... you're meant to be in bed. Asleep. This is going to make anything so much harder.'

'I knew you'd come, I knew you'd come back for me.' Madeleine was deliriously happy, seemingly ignoring his previous words. As she ran up to him, and stretched her arms around his waist he stiffened, and his face screwed up into a disconcerting expression.

'I'm so, so sorry Maddie.'

He pulled out a long stick from his robe pocket and pointed it at her, his hand shaking.

'Tom... what are you doing?' Tom shivered and opened his mouth to explain.

'Maddie, I'm a wizard. I learn magic. There's this spell, it makes you live forever-' With these words his eyes lit up in greed:

'They're called horcruxes. Your soul keeps you alive, if someone tries to kill you there will still be a part of you left. I'm making seven of them. You have to kill, brutally murder, to destroy your soul. I didn't know who I was close enough to, to even care if I killed them. But then I thought of you.'

For the first time he met her eyes.

'You're like my sister Maddie, and that's what the book suggested you use for your first murder. A close family relation. So here I am.'

He closed his eyes as he opened his mouth.

'Avada Kedavra!'

The last expression on Madeleine's face was one of pure shock, and of grief, as if she was the one who had lost a close friend.

Tom Riddle swished his wand to the side a he entered the room. A light appeared floating above him, and the girl, still asleep in bed, woke up with a start. Her eyes flickered open as she looked around the room, and they grew even wider as she saw Tom.

'Damn.' he said, and waved his wand again, and as he did so the girl fell to the floor, eyes glazed, open and staring at the ceiling.

Turning away from the petrified body, Tom turned to Madeleine's bed. He pulled the half-finished letter from the duvet and stuffed it into his trouser pocket.

He started pulling boxes out from behind the beds, searching for the rest of the paper.

After a while he found a cardboard box full of crumpled up paper, and pulled the first one off the top.

Dear Tom,

I know you won't read this, but I had to tell you something.

I began school again today, my first day at 'big school' as Mrs Cole says.

The people there are normal, nothing like you or me. They call me a 'geek' and 'nerd' just because I can do things faster than them, and better. I don't even know what they mean. Are they those muggle things you kept telling me about?

You never told me what a muggle was, maybe when you come back, you will.

Lots of love,

Madeleine (now a TEN year old)

He grabbed another one, and another, feeling a slight addiction to his late friend's words.

Dear Tom,

I'm so stupid, so lonely.

It was Lannie's birthday today, y'know that girl who always had her hair up in bunches, and sang folk songs?

(Well, you probably don't remember her, she's too normal for us.)

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, her birthday.

I was the only one not invited from our entire orphanage. Even the older boys went to her new beach house in Miami. It's not fair. She got the only good foster parents that came to the pit of hell.

No one even considered me.

Lots of love,

Madeleine

Dear Tom,

I thought you'd come back. But it's been four years, four years Tom. How could you leave me alone with these people Tom, how?

I wish I had never come here, no one likes me.

What's so special about being different Tom?

Why do you like it?

Madeleine.

Tom looked away from the page, tears threatening to spill from his eyes for the first time in 18 years.

Dear Tom,

I know you would call me a muggle for this, for that is your insult for most things.

I know crying is bad, you told me so yourself.

But you didn't tell me bleeding was bad.

I read about it in a book at school, about 'growing up'.

When people are upset they scar themselves, with those razors men use to trim their beards.

It said it was a bad thing.

But everything I do is bad, so what is one more?

Perhaps I will begin crying now, too.

Madeleine.

He turned to the page on the bed, and picked it up, his wand light throwing the otherwise indecipherable letter's into view.

Dear Tom,

Why am I still-

The letter stopped there. There was an ink blot by the place where the pen had been lying, he could tell it had been dropped in a rush and had made a mark on the paper.

'Excuse me, Sir, what are you doing?'

When Voldemort turned to look at the intruder, he heard a gasp. The light switch clicked and the room flooded with light. He caught a glance of himself in the mirror and recoiled at the sight of his once handsome face, now blurred at the edges and snake like.

'What's happened to me?' He whispered to himself

'A better question is, what are you doing in my orphanage?'

Voldemort, Tom Riddle, turned back to the elderly woman standing at the door. She looked angry, but he was angrier. Angry at himself.

There was a cascade of green fireworks that night.

As the evil man, soon to be most feared, walked from the destroyed building, he twitched his wand. The walls went up into orange and gold flames.

He didn't have to do it, but it wasn't about have to any more.

It was about the chill in his heart when he killed.

It was about the gaping hole inside him that filled just that little bit more when he murdered.

And it was about him making sure that Madeleine wasn't special.

That he could tear his soul apart killing anyone, not just her.

It wasn't a need to live forever any more, it was an addiction.

And an addiction to be feared more than any drug.

For it didn't just kill those subjected to his murder, it killed him, his humanness, his very soul, as well.

And he, he treasured his addiction, because now, it was the only thing he had.