Chapter 2

The Orphaned Riddle

Tom peered through the bushes. The sun ready to sink, after its day's duty cast an ochre glumness on his face which jibed the autumnal dullness around him. He walked briskly towards a poultry shed, leapt over the fence wall and quietly went over the half ramshackle section of the shed, where roosters were kept. He started feeding the roosters with spilled grains, eyeing cautiously for the caretaker who ran after him the last time. He loved roosters for some strange reason and never failed to visit them.

He closely examined slimy compost trench at one end and always wondered what it was used for, probably to catch intruders like him. A toad, still as stone near the edge of the trench, caught Tom's imagination. He dived forward on the ground and the few moments later the toad grappled helplessly in Tom's hands. This sudden movement of Tom scared the roosters which fluttered inside its cages. The caretaker sensing this sudden unrest pounded towards the shed. Tom was quick to react and thrusting the toad in his pocket climbed the shed like a monkey! The care taker however left, clueless.

Now sat atop on an almost crumbling shed of his neighbourhood he scanned the area. He took the toad from his pocket and stroked it thrice before flinging it aiming the compost trench. He could see a long building a much larger version of a railway wagon across a big ground where some kids were playing cricket. The wagon like building is where he would sleep that night. He gazed the orphanage which he loathed. Loathingwas an emotion too strong for a small boy like Tom. After every evening escapade, his thoughts would wander into a non-committal avenue of running away, from his seemingly stoic existence.

Choice was least significant, but consequences, he realized wisely, otherwise deterred him from carrying out the recurring thoughts of breaking free. The drearily painted orphanage was the only place he could call, home. The orphanage as people said was where the unwanted and less fortunate souls are kept or just dumped, whereby masking the blurred line of an ethical living. Does Tom approve of these social beliefs? Does he even understand what it means? But what Tom knew was that the place gave him shelter, food, clothing and most of all - affiliation. With a bunch of underprivileged children as company it was an affiliation his forefathers would reject with contempt and the meanest displeasure. More importantly it was the very place of his birth, of what he heard from Mrs. Cole and the very place his mother, the last witch of the inglorious and magnificent Slytherin bloodline, breathed her last.

Was he meant for bigger things? Was his life confined to an orphanage or rested on a hope that a couple would walk in one day and adopt him as their son? Would he be treated badly for his status as a stepson if his parents had a baby?

Deprived of love and care, deprived of the rightful and exhilarating experience of motherly love and parental upbringing his safest option and only hope then was living in that orphanage.

Tom climbed down the shed and sauntered across the width of the clearing, fully ignorant of his dark future, exactly like the darkness which drowned the London suburb, as the last traces of twilight vanished.