It is in the bright July sun that a boy emerges from the sage-green woods: tall, dark haired, with a too remarkable resemblance to a certain Riddle family to be coincidental. The townspeople do not notice him, gazing through him as he walks down the dusty road to the Riddle mansion. He slips past the maid, the gardener, with nary a glance toward the strange teenage boy. The butler almost thought he heard something when he passed by the French doors, but it may have just been the wind.
He finds them in the drawing room. The woman, old with crows eyes entrenched firmly in a countenance that spoke of disapproval, sipped her tea in delicate seashell china upon a shining lacquer table. Despite the rationing, petite finger sandwiches-cucumber and cress-accompany her, although the stately stand of bone-white porcelain likely has seen more abundant days. Afternoon tea, a concept he is vaguely familiar with from the books and the whispers from his peers, but something they never had time for at Wool's.
Beside her is her husband, fully grey hair, but blue eyes still clear. Finally, in the armchair by the window, is the man he was looking for. The afternoon sun does him plenty of favours, throwing into focus the patrician bone structure of both the woman and man, which the boy also shares.
Even though he knows they cannot hear it, the thud of his heart is deafening. Every pump and pulse of blood rushes through him as he comes to a stop. This is it.
The boy stands in the shadows on the edges of the scarlet tasseled rug. He watches them and waits behind the marble bust with the tyrian red cover below it. Step by step he wades out into the brightness of the drawing room, the inhabitants of the house still paying him no attention.
"Hello, father." He greets, dropping the concealment that has cloaked him for this journey.
The teapot crashes to the ground from the older man's hands.
Perhaps it is a fitting testament to the woman's upbringing and stiff upper lip, but she, to her credit, does not scream. Gasp, however, she does. No, it is her husband that releases the loud wail. And, by the window, Tom Riddle Senior pales.
"Who are you?" The woman demands, rising up from the loveseat to face him fully.
"You-"
"Yes." The junior replies, cutting his father off. "I am."
"Robert!" The woman screeched, "Robert!"
"She couldn't have, she-"
"Silencio." He intones, and with a flick of the ash wand, the sound from Riddle senior's mouth is bubbled down. Despite his sudden loss of a voice, eyes the same blue stare down into his own.
"This was a long time coming." Tom Marvolo Riddle says to no one in particular. "Goodbye." And with a flick of the 'borrowed' wand, he stabs the tip forward at the older man first, lips forming the shapes he had practiced over and over on the train ride here.
"Avada Kedavra."
The man jerked as if his strings were suddenly cut and falls down with a thud. Screaming fills the air, from the woman.
"Avada Kedavra." He focuses, thinking of the orphanage, the mould, the squeal of shoes against the floors, the cries and coughs of sickly children, the grey food. It is all too easy to cast the spell and she too falls to that sickly beam of green.
A familiar face stares back at him, pale white and silent, cool blue eyes wide.
"I would say it was a pleasure meeting you," The boy tells his father, looking him straight in the eyes as he steps forward across the carpet, sweeping the tea set onto the ground, "But that would be a lie."
"Avada Kedavra." He whispers, without giving the man a chance to respond.
That sickly green light flashes without hesitance and strikes him full in the chest. Glassy blue eyes, same as the boy's own, stare back wide. Unobservant, aware, no longer connected to this mortal coil. If he could see, if vision could function, if those cogs were turning, turning away, he would see his offspring go still. A moment of-as some like the old, dead woman would say-weakness. Or a moment of unsurety.
And Tom Marvolo Riddle stands still there just for a moment in the warmth of the July sun that shines through the windows, shadow cast long and looming over the face of his dead father.
An orphan, entirely of his own making.
He doesn't smile. He should, why isn't he happy? Has he not planned this for months?
The muscles in his face hang loose, except for the familiar not quite purse, but neutral draw of his mouth. It doesn't feel like happiness. Not like the relief after tension, or the rush of euphoria and headiness of that particular sensation of immortality, of power.
This should be the time for the ritual. Laughingly easy, almost too easy, for something so powerful: life everlasting. No fear of the bombs, the Germans, starvation, disease.
Except, except, all these excuses. Except indeed, except... He can't do it.
You fool, you coward, he screams at himself, all this for nothing! NOTHING!
The blue eyes of the corpse stare back at him, dull and unseeing. He's dead, he can't see anything. Yet it feels like the man can see everything. All those years of searching, combing the library, every book and record he could find, for this muggle.
(Why can't you do it?)
He raises his wand, the words formed on his tongue.
(The wand is in the wrong position.)
Inhale the air deeply, then exhale to shape the sound, but it is formless and hissed as it comes out.
He can't do it.
(Even now, his father manages to disappoint him.)