A/N: Just a little bit of drabble that crept into my head. It's AU in that I completely made up what the orphanage was like and what happened. A little look at Tom Riddle before he became Lord Voldemort.
He'd never be helpless again.
So Tom vowed as he stood there, in the dusty half-yard at the back of the orphanage, bile rising in his throat, his ears ringing with the older boys' mocking laughter. His face burned. The pain hadn't set in yet. It wouldn't for a while, not until the embarrassment and shame had started to dull. He ran his tongue across his front teeth, collecting the iron tang of blood from them.
"Pathetic little freak," a hissed epithet stung him, but he showed no reaction on his face as he slowly made his way into the dim brick building. He couldn't let himself be seen by any of the staff, they'd yell at him for fighting again. Never mind that he hadn't started it. Hadn't even managed to throw a punch. He had somehow made a branch fall on the ringleader's foot, but he chalked that up to freakiness.
Never mind what he knew would happen later, when everyone else was asleep. How he would be dragged from his bed and shoved into the older boys' dormitory, pajamas roughly stripped from him as they decided what to do to him. His freakiness always deserted him then, in his moments of utter helplessness, pushed from bed to bed. Called a freak, a bastard, a whore.
He dug his nails into his palms so hard he drew tiny beads of blood, welling down his skin, and had to hastily wipe them off on his dirty trousers. One of the girls laughed and sneered at him, showing off crooked and broken teeth. He vowed to pay her back one day. All of them. He would get all of them.
Two months later, a bearded man who went by the name Professor Dumbledore showed up on the orphanage's doorstep and told Tom Riddle Jr. that he was a wizard. And the world trembled.