Darkest Hour Gryffindorian2014
Summary:
At his father's family house in Little Hangleton, England, Tom Marvolo Riddle is a quiet and curious boy. But circumstances surrounding his birth has set the course of his life hurtling down the darkest of roads. Albus Dumbledore might have been the only brief ray of light in little Tom's life, but one afternoon preceding Tom's seventh birthday changes everything: setting the wheels that would turn the wizarding world upside down, in motion.
Notes: Inspired by Never Mind by Edward St. Aubyn.
Disclaimer: This fanfiction is written for entertainment purposes only and no monetary gain is being made off it. Any violation of trademark or infringement of copyright is purely coincidental and unintentional. The rights belong to its respective owner(s) and nothing substantial is being gained from this venture.
Timeline: 1926-1933, the precise date for the narrative, unless specified, is Christmas/Christmas Eve of 1933.
Please take the archive warnings very seriously.
For the sake of the plot:
1. Merope Gaunt's death occurs five years after Tom Riddle's birth.
2. Tom isn't born in Wool's Orphanage but at Riddle Manor.
3. Dumbledore visits Tom the year his mum dies instead of later.
4. Tom isn't acutely aware of the extent of his magical powers until the 1933 incident dealt with in the fic, he only vaguely conjectures that he might be different.
Work Text:
"I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Dummel—er—Dumbledore" Mrs. Cole informed, the practised professionalism in her tone scarcely concealing her feelings on the matter being just the exact opposite. After all, Tom had not returned since having allegedly caused Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop to lose their speech when the children were taken outside London for their annual Christmas picnic.
When Albus Dumbledore fixed her with a clear blue, scrutinizing stare over his half-moon spectacles, Mrs. Cole hurried on to add—
"Oh dear—how forgetful of me," she said, smiling nervously beneath the headmaster's darkly displeased gaze, "Billy, Billy Stubbs—did say that he might have seen the boy jump over the perimeter wall last night…although, how a little boy might have…most baffling…" she trailed off.
"Thank you, Mrs. Cole," said Dumbledore with grim finality.
Stepping out through the unpolished wrought iron gate with 'Wool's Orphanage' crafted in ugly lettering, he cleared his mind of the thoughts of his recent unpleasant experience and focused singularly on the one place Tom Marvolo Riddle could go.
Tom is five years old when his mother dies.
Two years too early for Dumbledore to have been able to try to save her. He observes. This wasn't supposed to happen.
The incessant London rain beats down noisily upon the collar of his worn weatherproof while he is left alone by the clumsy grave of his mother, with only an old wooden board as its marker. A grave, not dissimilar to the one his mother had hurriedly dug by their pond when she had wanted to bury the ragdoll she always carried.
One moment he is staring blankly at the freshly disturbed earth on the ground, and the next he's back in the manor, his mother is putting him to bed, singing, in her unmelodious voice, a strange lullaby with words like cauldron and something about the sweet smell of love.
A quick flash of luminous green light…something made of wood…thin and pointy, clattering down the stairs to his feet…at the top of the staircase, his mother's pale arm slumped at an odd angle, lifeless.
…Tom rushing up the steps, mother, mother. Wake up, mother. Wake up!
Why, Merope...his father's cruel, derisive voice hard with loathing…are you dead…
No...No...this wasn't supposed to happen…The quick flash of green light…something of wood…pointy, clattering down the stairs to his feet…at the top of the staircase, his mother's pale arm slumped at an odd angle, lifeless…a long line of dark red growing thicker along the length of her pale arm.
Wake up, mother. Wake up!
His thoughts seemed to be stuck in an endless loop of reliving the same moments, like the sharp sting of cold rain, running in streams down his face…over and over…over and over and over…
Green light flooding the landing…thin and pointy wooden object clattering down to his feet…his mother's pale arm covered in blood…
Why Merope…dead…yet…
Wake up!
A flood of green light…clattering wood…Merope Gaunt's pale arm…lifeless and saturating the red carpet with a darker red…like his overcoat was turning a deeper black from standing in the rain.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
The shadows look horribly deformed, he thinks, moving crookedly like that against the crude wooden finishing of the door. Longing to move so that the shadows could fall properly, he struggles to sit up but is stopped by his father who is holding him, face down upon the ground with his large hands on his small shoulder blades. Failing in his attempts to free himself, he concentrates instead on the sound of steady rain pattering against the frame of the smallish window cut beside the door. The raised metal platform attached to the exterior surface directly beneath the frame—currently concealed from view because of his vantage point—was where father fed Ecthoris.
Tom tries twisting his head around but he can only see the dark green of his father's riding cloak. He suddenly feels extremely anxious and wonders where Ecthoris is and whether he is sufficiently warm.
In order to quell the fearful thundering in his chest, he begins to sluggishly count down the days to his seventh birthday.
…Seven.
Tom's blunt nails scratch desperately against the damp hay underneath him when he feels one of his father's cold, ungloved hands groping around his abdomen to pull his trousers and underpants down.
He hears the familiar hiss of his father's pants and he is reminded of those nights his mother would be too sick to put him to bed. When his father's weight would dip into the bedding in his mother's space and the same hissing sound would precede sounds of his father's soft grunts and slapping—but infinitely more gentle—as if on wet skin, Tom would lie stock still in his bed, pretending to sleep crushed under the oppressive darkness, fearing that, any time now, his father might touch him.
"Stay still." His father warns, a dangerous edge to his voice as an enormous and unknown pressure begins building at the base of his spine.
"What are you doing?" he asks, but his father doesn't reply and he is too afraid to repeat the question.
His father's hands push down harder on him, one of them now grabbing his head, forcing his cheek to be squashed into the hay, hardly allowing him to breathe. Through his lashes, Tom stares fixedly at the light coming in from the feeding-window and feels his world split in half. He tries to understand why his father was punishing him when he had only come to get his things; he only gathered that his father must be very angry to be hurting him like this.
Tom vaguely registers the overwhelming stench of horse faeces, distantly speculating how he hadn't noticed it before.
…Six
An eccentrically dressed man visits him at the orphanage his father sent him away to, a week following his mother's death, and days before he is going to turn six-years-old.
"I'm just like you, Tom." He says, smiling kindly. "Different."
"Prove it."
If Dumbledore thinks the boy uncannily composed for his age, he does not let it show.
The utility wardrobe in Tom's tiny room erupts into green flames that do no actual harm to it. Tom is reminded of a burst of green light but he smiles back charmingly in acknowledgement.
He wondered about the view from outside the window. If he only could get up and stand on the feeding-tub outside, Tom could have sat looking down on the whole scene, just as his father was looking down on him. For a moment, Tom felt he was up there watching with detachment the punishment being inflicted by a strange man on a smaller boy. As hard as he could Tom concentrated on the window frame and the view remained longer.
He thought he heard movement in the hay. Straining, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it.
Tom had only seen the boomslang twice, but he had sat still for ages staring at its bulging black eyes, like the beads on his mother's heirloom onyx necklace, and at its darting-withdrawing forked tongue that it had tried to threaten him with while it sat motionless on a coil of its own body underneath his favourite tree trunk and, above all, at its astonishingly green scales that looked as delicate as jewelry and glittered like emeralds under the sunlight. The second time he saw the snake, Tom had reached out with his hand and carefully touched its head with the tip of his index finger, whispering endearments, it did not move and he had felt that it understood and trusted him.
…Five…Four
It was mainly out of horror mixed with some degree of latent awe that had him transfixed to his place and unable to leave. Feeling infused with a kind of reverence he didn't even realize he was giving up willingly while he heard his father grunt unintelligibly and he subsequently felt relieved of the tight pressure in his lower back. Rather slack-jawed, Tom dully recognized the humiliation of his position, face down, with his trousers and underpants bunched around his feet, effectively tying his legs together, and then more vividly, a worrying wetness at the end of his spine now slipping down his buttocks—it made him think he was bleeding.
…Three…Two…
"Is this your...pet?" his father sneered, having spotted the threat and killed it with the swiftness of a thunderbolt.
A barely audible "no" and a quick glance towards half of the beautiful jewelled body now limp and shrivelled in his father's fist while the other half lay twitching for a few seconds on the hay. Its body indifferent, a receptacle cast in porcelain like green glass, and the smell of untraceable decay hanging in the air.
"You will be sent away from Hangleton tomorrow. Forever. I presume you've gathered your possessions?" Without waiting for a response or a second glance, Tom Riddle Sr. turns towards the stable door, now hanging open from a gust of wind, and slides quietly out into the drizzle.
One.
Didn't Albus Dumbledore say the number seven was magic?
Tom managed a belated nod of his head, sitting up unsteadily on the throbbing pain now shooting up his back and hardly showing signs of ebbing away.
He then crawled towards the reptile, dragging his weight on his elbows and took a long look at the now unmoving half of the boomslang. Its tongue had lolled out and those onyx eyes were duller than cheap coal. Tom's chest, however, felt curiously placid, as if something very cold was coiling around his heart, soothing the burning heat of…of shame—that seemed to make it beat wildly.
Then, like the creatures of the pond, concealed below the thick blanket of ice behind the manor during winter, black rage stirs, slowly raising its hood and baring its fangs.
Dull, cracking sounds fill the air as the wooden stable crashes apart, breaking into splinters and beginning to swirl in a vortex, with Tom at its centre.
Tom is six and a few months older, when Dumbledore transfigures a rat into a foal, at his request.
Ecthoris…he recalls fondly.
At a considerable distance, down the narrow moss-covered stone path by the Riddle manor, Ecthoris begins neighing wildly. Master Riddle tries calming the beast, leaning in to whisper reassuringly in its ear, but he convulses violently— throwing his confounded master off his back—dark blood spluttering from his mouth, red upon the white snow, and trying to lurch forward but already falling on its side. Rolling upon its back, the horse's body shakes as if possessed and its four legs struggle—throwing them at comical angles—gradually twitching to complete silence.
When Dumbledore finds Riddle Senior's dead horse, he fails to understand the reason for Tom's violent reaction. The knowledge of Merope's suicide reaffirms the conclusions he had previously drawn from the tragedy surrounding the way Tom Riddle was conceived.
More than a decade later and finally aware of what transpired: the Hogwarts's transfiguration professor, now headmaster, will collapse with defeat against the high back of his study's chair and deliberate, with unprecedented pain, that it's true. It's all still true that there be monsters everywhere, verily, and in the safest of places, in the most impedingly polished of cloistered niches of the world.
~ fin ~