The candy red engine huffed like an impatient horse in a stall as young Tom Riddle stepped off the Hogwart's Express, the woolen sleeves of the uniform all of Wool's Wards were forced to wear scratching at his scrawny arms and second hand trunk bumping along at his heels. He kept a mask of cold uncaring carefully in place but inside his heart had shattered like an egg fallen from its nest and now lay crushed upon the station's dirty floor. The twelve year old had decided he would leave it there; maybe if he did, if he ignored it for long enough, it would grow coarse hair like in the story and he wouldn't be able to feel anything at all anymore.

He'd thought that he'd grown tough, grown strong, in the orphanage where he was attacked from all sides by the awful Matron and the stupid Muggle children. Where he was taught by the dark of night and sung to sleep by snakes. But he'd been wrong. If he really had grown strong there he'd have known better than to open himself up to the world of magic. Would have been prepared for the reality that even amongst his own kind he was ostracized as something different and unclean.

What difference was there, really, between 'freak' and 'Mudblood'?

Many years ago, when he was only five, he'd been told a story by one of the families who had attempted to adopt him. A story about a broken porcelain doll that had been salvaged from the bin by a kind old doll maker who had taken him home and repaired him, treating the doll like the son he'd never had, and that after he was finished he'd become the prettiest and most valued doll in all the land. It had stuck with him for a long time. Wedged in his subconscious like a thorn. The cruel hope that, out there somewhere, there was a doll maker for him too.

But there wasn't, and he knew that now.

Stories were for the children fortunate enough to have a light ahead to look to. Who had parents who loved them. He didn't. He was the broken doll that wouldn't be saved. Would be thrown into the furnace with all the rest of the garbage of the world unless he found a way to save himself.

And maybe he would. After the truth stopped hurting.

Tom tried not to look around him as he left Platform 9 ¾ and began to make his way out of King's Cross Station. At the Purebloods with their cold public promise of private affection to come. At the Muggle-borns and Half-bloods whose parents smothered them in hugs and questions and promises of their favorite meal. At the other children, laughing and smiling and surrounded by the friends that he would never have.

Freak. Freak! Monster. Evil!

When he was still very young and couldn't spell much beyond his name, when he hadn't even begun to be able to control what he now knew to be his magic, he'd dreamed of having a family of his own. That his own parents would find him, that he was only there because they'd lost him and were desperately looking, or that new parents would adopt him. When he could find paper and something to draw with he'd make pictures of a house and of the family he wanted. Dreamed of. A beautiful mother who would sing to him at night. A kind and handsome father who would play ball with him in the yard, whom he could look up to and emulate. Maybe a pet of some kind, like a dog.

After the second time he'd been returned to Wool's Tom had stopped drawing.

When he arrived back at the depressing building after trekking his way through half the city Mrs. Cole stared at him as if he'd returned holding a bloodied knife rather than an old trunk but said nothing. He made his way up the stairs and into his room, shutting the door behind him and collapsing onto the bed.

The rusty metal skeleton of the cot creaked beneath his weight. He curled up atop his poor excuse for a mattress without even attempting to remove his shoes and let everything that he'd been keeping at bay wash over him. He had no intention to go down to dinner that night and knew that no one would bother to come looking for him. He could have died up there and no one would have cared. His time was much better served building the hardest shell he could about himself before the next year started than attempting to chew through days stale bread anyway if he was going to do more than barely survive in Slytherin House but in order to do that he needed to first get rid of all the pent up emotion.

Biting the sleeve of his shirt to keep himself from making too much noise he allowed himself to cry. Choking on the shame of doing so even behind closed doors as the tears burned his eyes and he shook like a leaf caught in a winter gale. He was a child, weak and worthless, and he hated himself for it. Tom wanted to be strong so badly, was determined to make himself strong quickly, yet he'd never felt more vulnerable in his life than he did in that moment.

Maybe he'd dozed off, or maybe he'd descended into some sort of bizarre delusion, because the next thing he knew he was being held in someone's lap. Rocked in someone's arms. A man, from the smell of shoe polish and expensive cologne and the dark sound of a voice which hummed a senseless comfort. Steady heartbeat ticking in his ear. He was warm.

A dream. It must have been. No one cared for him in the orphanage and even if that hadn't been the case men didn't work there. And it couldn't be someone come to adopt a child; on the off chance they were of the rare breed looking for someone older than three the Matron would have done everything in her power to make him seem like the Devil.

The Devil that she'd forced him to become.

If this was a dream then he was going to get as much out of it as he could-he didn't get much in the way of comfort in his life, even from his own sub-conscious-because it didn't matter. Didn't affect anything in the grand scheme of things. None of it was real. He wrapped his arms around the man's tapered waist and buried his face in the side of his neck. Breathing in his smell and slowly bringing his tears to a sniffling conclusion, enjoying the gentle touch of long fingers in his hair.

They were clumsy, as if unfamiliar with giving such gestures, but that didn't matter. It was one of the only times he could remember having experienced a touch that was kind and he leaned into it. Despite the burning desire to know what this strange man looked like he resisted the urge to open his eyes because he was certain that, if he looked, he would disappear and he didn't want that. Not yet.

"You're alright, Junior." His voice was a smooth baritone and rumbled through his ear where it pressed against his shoulder. "You're alright."

"M-Mr. Riddle, I'm afraid I can't allow you to linger in the orphanage now that your business is concluded!"

The Matron's broken record screech of a voice shattered the almost surreal calm of the room and Tom's eyes popped open, his body going abruptly stiff. He pulled back, the arms around him loosening to let him do so, and looked at the man who was kneeling in front of him; the same dark curls, aquiline nose and cut jaw and cheekbones he would gain once the lingering baby fat-what little he'd managed to accumulate between the war's rationing and Wool's less than stellar funds-finally left him. The only thing clearly discernable as different between them aside from his age were that the other man's eyes, narrowed into a glare that could cut through glass, were a stormy grey.

"I don't intend to linger but for God's sake did you expect me to simply drag him out of here? How can you call yourself a Matron, sober or not, when you haven't even the barest instinct to comfort a crying child?"

His father! This was his father! His father had come back for him! He was here! He was…a Muggle?

His father was a Muggle. How could he be a Muggle; he was supposed to be a Wizard! He had to have been. His mother couldn't have been a witch because if she'd had magic then she wouldn't have died! Wouldn't have left him. But he'd spent almost all year searching for some mention of the name Riddle in the Hogwart's library. Had gone through every book the castle had had that was even remotely related to Blood Lines. Had found nothing.

"Spending the orphanage's funds on Vodka instead of the necessary resources and repairs! Drunk in the middle of the day! And yet Child Protective Services still considers you fit to oversee an orphanage?" he rose abruptly, stooped to clear the dust from his knees, and then drew himself up to his full height. He radiated a level of command that Tom had thought only the Pureblood Lords of Ancient and Noble Houses could possess. "You're lucky that my concern is only with taking my son home, not with reparations for his no doubt beyond lack luster treatment, because by the time I'd be through with you, you wouldn't be seen as fit to run a dog pound!"

The bint withered before him like a weed before the fiery breath of an infuriated dragon. Tom watched with interest, a stubborn seed of hope managing to burrow into his chest. Maybe the man wouldn't be so bad after all. The awful woman set her lips into a thin pale line but said nothing. His father turned to him and pointed to his beaten trunk.

"This is yours?" he nodded, the frog in his throat still too large for him to trust his voice not to break. He'd already cried all over the man and didn't need to embarrass himself any further. "Is there anything else that you want to take with you?"

The only things he had to his name were already in his trunk or on his person, and most of those were second hand. Tom shook his head as he pushed himself up onto his feet; a hand on his shoulder stopped his effort to lift the trunk by the handle.

"We've the help for such things, Junior." His father looked passed Mrs. Cole into the hallway at an older man he hadn't noticed before. "Take his trunk, Philip."

"Of course, Master." As the man lifted his trunk with white gloved hands Tom stared. From the way that his father dressed and acted it was plain that he was wealthy, but to have servants? The Muggle equivalent of House Elves?

The same blood he'd spent months cursing for the suffering that it caused him at the hands of his fellow Slytherins, the same blood that had made him 'filthy', might be the thing which made him something in at least one of the worlds in which he held unsteady footing. Though perhaps not the one he wanted.

He'd have to see how everything went. If there was anything that Tom's life, his most recent experiences especially, had taught him it was not to trust. People or opportunities.

The man had quite a lot to answer for, after all. Twelve year's worth, to be exact. Most obviously where in the bloody hell he'd been, and whether or not he'd have to stomach to keep him.

Tom didn't spare the Matron a glance as he walked passed her and neither did his father. The man led him down the stairs, passed the staring eyes of the other wards-he sneered at Billy Stubbs as they passed-and out of Wools. Philip had placed his belongings in the trunk of the black Rolls Royce waiting on the street and was now holding the back door open for them.

His father motioned for him to get in first and Tom clambered in on all four of his still short limbs. Settling into one of the rows of seats and looking around in discrete curiosity. The interior of the sport's car smelled like well-kept leather and more of his father's cologne; the older man closed the back door and rolled down the window to let in the cooling evening air and then, without much fanfare but with great excitement on Tom's account, the sleek car growled to life. Pulling away from the curb and onto the London streets.