Disclaimer: If you think I own any of the Harry Potter things, then please wake up and smell the coffee...I'm not trying to make money off of this, but donations *are* welcome. ;-) j/k
The boy pulled his knees up to his chest, huddling deeper inside his large jacket in seek of a warmth he could not find. His unkempt black hair was windswept and askew all over his head like the grass on a tempest-tossed island. He sat down quietly in front of the small classroom, a classroom whose paint was chipping and who looked in the same state of disrepair as the young boy did. Huddling closer into his own small body, the boy took his miniscule lunch out as he watched the other children, playing games he could never play, doing things he could never do.
He puzzled over the recent event as he brushed a stray strand of black hair off of his scared, pale face. Why did these things happen? Why had he suddenly...well, appeared in a different place? It didn't make any sense...always him, never anyone else. He once thought these were ordinary things that happened to everyone every now and then. They had taught him the truth. Only Satanic demons like him did things like he did. Only Satanic Demons...he wished he could still be in the ignorant bliss he was in when he was young, an innocence he bade goodbye to unwillingly, tears blurring his last sight of the precious creature that can never be regained which we call innocence.
The shivering boy was jerked out of his thoughts by another's jeering mockery. "All alone again, loner? Then again, it's not surprising -- who'd want to be with an evil...evil creature like you? Certainly no one worth mentioning...for that matter, no one at all." He sneered as he left, kicking the boy carelessly as he left.
Evil creature...evil creature. The words played themselves in his mind, echoing within the deep and endless chasms that were held within. Could they be right? Was he really evil...he tried to say, "Of course not," to himself, even said it out loud, risking becoming even more of an outcast if anyone heard him, but it wasn't convincing against the countless taunts and jeers...evil creature, evil creature. That's what they called him, always called him...they couldn't be right, could they?
Yet even his teachers told him he had Satan inside him. In a voice barely at a whisper, he asked the air, "What's wrong with me," the age old question, asked once again, a question which the air didn't reply to...not that the boy could really expect an answer from the mute air.
Suddenly he saw a skirt fly by his eyes and he quickly looked up.
The ten-year-old's almost innocent eyes drifted towards Miranda, her dark hair and her beautiful body. God she was beautiful...silly, of him, the outcast, loner, evil creature, to have a little crush on the most popular girl in the school, but somehow when he looked at her he suddenly didn't feel like quite such an outcast when he laid eyes on her, suddenly it seemed like so much more than just a crush...and Miranda was suddenly not just popular Miranda who taunted him like everyone else did...she was someone more.
But hopes are shot down before the idealistic man's eyes, the dead carcass of the hopes rotting and leaving an awful stench within the heart of he who held the hopes, never quite disappearing...always there. "You got a staring problem?" she asked him, hands on hips and attitude completely there. "Or are the demons that possess you just making you?"
She and the group that surrounded her, pressing on at her, giggled harshly. No regard of what the demonic, pale, dark-haired boy was feeling...it was all about keeping popularity and fighting the forces of evil, of course. The boy sighed as the ghost of another hope took up residence in the haunted house he called his heart.
He shivered again inside his coat, drawing in further, further into himself and away from the world who hated him. He wasn't really evil...was he? The thought never left his mind, haunting him like a Grim haunts he who is about to die.
"Children, time to come in from lunch," Miss Chameera's voice cut into his reverie.
And so the boy sighed and rose and sighed. Why should he have expected anything to be fixed today? Why should he have expected anything good to happen? It was just another day...just another hellish day in the cursed life of the boy who was then Tom Riddle.