You guys made me so happy. So it's looks like I'll be continuing my story, for another chapter at least. Since I'm on a roll I was able to knock this out a lot sooner than I had expected (or perhaps because I had more time on my hands?) Whatever. Hopefully, you enjoy it. As explained in the warnings, it's due to be an epic story and thus will be quite slow to build up the boy's characters, friendship and whatnot. I want to make them as realistic as possible which means despite Tom being protective of Harry, he won't be nice about it. Who like's a nice Tom? Really?

Also, new poll up. Please check and have your say.

2

From orphan to... wizard?

-x&x-

Leaving Mrs. Cole's office, Harry wasn't surprised to find Riddle out in the hall still waiting as promised. Or threatened. Really, both words when in relation to the other were essentially synonymous.

"What did Mrs. Cole want?" Riddle was quick to enquire, then spotted the items Harry wasn't able to hide. "Give me a look."

He snatched the bag from Harry's small hand; the younger boy didn't stand a chance.

Riddle moved quickly, like a striking serpent; far too fast for him to do anything more than gape in startled indignation at the abrupt loss, his gift already in the other's hand.

Normally he wouldn't put up much of a fuss—what could he do against Riddle anyway?—but this time was different: those three items were all that remained of his past, his parents presumably or family. He felt sickness clench and unclench in his stomach and the icy touch of dread trailed fingers up and down his spine as the older boy withdrew the frail glass ball from within the velvet pouch, handled it without care.

If Riddle dropped it...

"Be careful with that!" he demanded, alarmed, reaching for the orb. The other's expression darkened.

"Why should I?" Riddle challenged.

Harry swallowed, panicky and nauseous, he felt horribly cold. His eyes flickered from the other boy's tall form to the glass held aloft in his hand, where swirls of scarlet danced within. He'd never seen anything like it before and if it was broken... he doubted he'd ever find another.

"Please, Tom."

An odd expression flittered across the older boy's features; like a shadow stealing across the moon. Harry had never seen it on him before. The blood froze in his veins, had he inadvertently angered Riddle further?

His breathing quickened in sync with his fluttering heart.

"What is this?" Riddle questioned softly, after a pause, the orb held aloft but gaze still adhered to the younger's face. "Certainly not a mere child's toy, nor an ornament: it feels different. You were given this for your birthday... Why?"

Harry didn't bother to wonder at the fact that Riddle even knew when his birthday was.

He held out trembling, still ink-stained digits.

"I..." he paused, swallowed. "Those were left with me on the doorstep when I was abandoned," he explained, haltingly. "Please give it back—"

"Why?"

Now Riddle was just toying with him.

Beneath the fear of loss, Harry felt a surge of anger towards the older boy.

"You might break—"

There was a sudden sharp CRACK and Riddle let out a small sound of pain, a twisted scowl fitted upon his features as he shook the hand still holding the glass ball.

A word distinctly adult in nature snarled from the boy's thin pale pink lips.

Red abruptly spilled from the orb in great undulating wisps, swiftly filled the narrow, concrete and stone hallways like a noxious, sentient miasma. It very quickly thickened, coloured everything in sight a stunning, vicious scarlet.

A startled gasp escaped Harry's lips, he jumped back from the mist alarmed.

The mist followed. Swirling smoky tentacles snaked across the ground, toward him then up, up into his face as he struggled to fight it off.

He turned to run, froze, terrified, tried to fight through his fear as the mist-like stuff smothered him, forced its way inside his nasal passage, mouth and airways. He coughed, inhaled yet more of the retched red not-quite-smoke despite his desperate attempts to avoid it then fell forward, head spinning as more and more of the not-smoke-stuff drifted up his nose.

He heard ringing and Riddle speaking; urgent and quiet, directly into his ear. Felt something digging into his shoulders painfully, around his chest and into his hip.

Then deathly silence took over and everything faded to black.

-x&x-

When Harry woke he expected blinding white. He was wrong. Instead, he got dull and ugly grey.

Where...? Oh, right. He was in his bedroom in the orphanage. Where else was he expecting to wake up? Where else had he woken for the last five odd years? Well, he supposed it was closer to a little over six years now, considering he was eight that day.

Something tickled at the back of his mind, whispering a different answer but he paid it little attention. Why did he feel so... groggy?

It took him a moment before he could recall what he'd been doing before taking a nap in the... middle of the afternoon, judging by the sickly light filtering in through his narrow bedroom window. Once he did, he jerked upwards, squinting towards the small bedside drawer and was once again surprised. Atop it sat his pouch, key and a now clear glass bal—

Remembrall...

Right. A remembra—what?

"A remembrall," he muttered, picking the item in question up, its function readily springing to mind as if summoned like a genie: A glass ball that contains smoke which turns red if it's owner forgets something...

On some level, he knew that this sudden knowledge should worry him. That he should be concerned by what it all meant but found that, on some level he'd already known and simply forgotten... But how on earth had he forgotten that? Or more to the point, how had he even known what it was to begin with if he'd been at Wool's orphanage since he was little more than a year old?

Maybe it wasn't a memory but a dream? Some crazy dream... He had been sleeping before this knowledge came to him, so it wasn't too implausible.

Something niggled at the back of his mind; warned him he was forgetting something infinitely more important—

"Assess the situation," a familiar yet unfamiliar masculine voice echoed through his mind like a long memorised hymn. The deep richness of it caused a sharp pang of nostalgia and the remembrance of... loss. "Of your person and your environment..."

The pain was promptly followed by fright.

Although part of himself trusted that voice another part of him didn't. Even at eight he knew that hearing voices in his head was abnormal. Yet, that same piece of him—the part that knew what a remembrall was—urged him to follow the unknown voice's advice; that it had never led him wrong before.

But if it was only another dream-fragment... how was he to know whether the voice was trust worthy or not?

"You aren't going to tell Mrs. Cole what happened."

Riddle.

Harry stiffened, turned, narrowed his eyes on the other boy seated on the lone rickety chair on the far side of the room. He was regarded just as narrowly in return.

"She'll find out on her own," Harry refuted, concluding Riddle must have dragged him back to his room on his own. He'd have been in the hideous box of a room that served as the infirmary otherwise. Harry didn't even want to consider how she'd failed to hear their little... scuffle in the hall. "She's quite sharp."

Inconveniently sharp... He paused at the thread of... memory? Thought? Dream? That was, yet wasn't his own.

Riddle looked angry, his expression black. "She can't prove a thing. So you won't say nothing. Or else..."

They continued to stare at each other; Riddle in warning and himself in contemplation. The threat was very real, Harry acknowledged it and yet wasn't as afraid of the older boy at all for the first time since he'd come to know him. On some level, he knew exactly how dangerous the boy was—or could be—but found himself only extremely wary.

"You said that ball was a remember all..." the older broke the silence.

"Remembrall."

Riddle glared at the correction, straightened up. "How do you know what it is? You must have made the name up; I've never heard of one before."

That admission must have hurt.

Again Harry blinked at the wayward thought, he opened his mouth, 'I don't know,' ready to fall from his lips. "It's a magical device," came out instead.

He clamped his mouth shut, startled, nose scrunched in confusion.

Was this another dream-thing? It must be but then why—

"Magic?" Riddle murmured, but not in disbelief or scorn as the younger of the pair expected. His visage had taken on an almost hungry expression that disturbed Harry even more and the boy stood, prowled closer. "Is that what that red smoke was? Magic? What do you know about magic?"

Harry shook his head. He didn't know anything about magic besides his own strange powers and yet that wasn't true. He knew it wasn't but couldn't decide what was and wasn't real anymore. Slivers of dreams?—Memories?—danced across his mind in a myriad of fantastical sensations that teased all of his senses...

Wind stinging his face, ripping at his clothing as he flew... that tingling warmth he'd long associated with his strange 'gift' as he coaxed a flower into full bloom... the searing, blood boiling, nerve igniting sensation of being held under the pain inflicting curse... A castle—his home—in utter ruins, the grounds around it strewn with mangled bodies and rivers of blood... the scent of burning hair and flesh... a beautiful, dirty, tear-streaked face telling him—

He jerked, covered his mouth as his stomach roiled, tried to expel the little he'd consumed for lunch.

That couldn't be real and yet, he knew... The strange, unbidden loss he felt convinced him of this truth and he felt hollow, confused and so very guilty. But for what? What had he to be guilty for? He'd never been to a castle before... was that, why he was at the orphanage? Because his parents had died in this... this massacre? Were these memories from his first year of life?

But... they couldn't be... Supposedly a child's memory only truly began around the age of three and he barely recalled anything from his time as a four year old...

'I don't know,' he wanted to say and again, instead supplied; "It exists."

And he almost didn't want it to but more than that, he wished he could regain control of his own motor functions.

Riddle's eyes burned, turning them a molten silver instead of the usual bizarre smoky-slate-indigo. He reminded Harry of a prowling wolf; half mad with starvation and something infinitely more feral. "Prove it."

"Why should I?" Harry shot back in challenge, half surprised at his own audacity, the other half annoyed with himself for that surprise. He prayed Riddle wouldn't pick up on his use of words but knew better. He added; "You seem to know something of it. Why don't you, show me?"

What was wrong with him?!

No one challenged Riddle.

Maybe he was... possessed? That actually made sense and it explained the... memories and random idle thoughts that were almost his own but not quite.

He needed time to think.

"I suppose I could show you what I know," Riddle decided quietly, stepped closer again until his legs brushed against the bed Harry was seated in. He leaned in and Harry didn't like the glint in the older boy's eye. "But I should warn you; you won't like it."

A slim, cool hand seized Harry's wrist, tightened like a vice—Ow!

His body gave a violent jolt, teeth sank into his bottom lip, a scream on the cusp of bursting from his lips but was held back with a steadfast determination.

He would not scream for Riddle; he refused despite the torrent of liquid fire erupting through every nerve ending in his hand, that filled his mind with an agonised mantra he couldn't quite understand. His eyes stung and his chest heaved in rapid, tiny breaths. He would not scream... He would not—CRACK

SNAP, CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, POP.

It felt like all the bones in his hand had been broken, splinted, were twisting around each other in a grotesque rendition of a tango. His head jerked backwards, pressed into the rough, worn cover of his pillow, brushed against his too hot cheek, scratched at it, grazed his tender skin.

Blood burst upon his tongue; metallic and salty. A tear escaped the corner of his eye.

The pain ceased abruptly.

A hiss tried to ease its way out, found itself constricted, emerged instead as a relieved gasp. He struggled back into a sitting position on unsteady limbs, licked at his bloodied bottom lip. It stung.

"You didn't scream," mused Riddle, leaning slightly over him, his hand still clutched at Harry's wrist. He seemed... disappointed.

"You expected me to?"

Was that his voice? He sounded winded.

"Yes."

A blunt fingernail dragged across the delicate inner part of his wrist. He forced himself not to flinch at the contact, failed when he met that burning gaze.

"Satisfied?" The older boy prompted, silkily. "Or, perhaps, another demonstration is in order?"

Without breaking eye-contact, Harry lifted his free hand and the key he'd received earlier soared into it, hovered several inches above his palm, pirouetted slowly: as graceful as any ballerina.

Riddle watched for several moments, that same hungry look about his eyes.

"I knew it," he hissed in a deranged satisfaction. His gaze, when it met Harry's, revealed the unbridled pride held for a treasured pet that had performed well. It made his stomach twist in knots. "I knew you were different than the others.

"What else can you do?"

Harry shrugged, uncomfortable, drew his hand back to himself, cradled it. The phantom impression of pain lingering still. Reluctance gnawed at him as he slipped the key inside his pocket. "Different things."

The pressure around his wrist grew, despite being no longer captive. He exhaled shakily at the threat.

"I heal faster than normal people..." he began quiet, resentful, listing off the more obvious skills he possessed; the one's more likely to have been noticed by others. "Animals too, if the injuries aren't serious—"

"Can you cause pain?"

Harry blinked, shook his head. "No," he replied, honestly.

Riddle said nothing, just kept watching him, curious, that wild pleasure now gone from his face. Something about it made him think that the older boy had already known the answer before he asked. Now for the big one.

"I can... control time. Sort of."

"How?" Riddle demanded, straightened where he stood.

"I can slow a fall if I'm pushed... make flowers bloom... or return to a bud."

Riddle studied him carefully. "You can't manipulate time to do anything else? Like say, change seasons? Speed entire days up? Make them slow down?"

"It's too hard."

Which wasn't lying. He'd tried making an entire tree flower and passed out through sheer exhaustion. He'd gotten a week long fever after that and not attempted it again for fear of a repeat performance.

"Hmmm..."

Harry tilted his head, curious himself. "What can you do?"

Riddle smiled enigmatically. "Different things."

The younger boy frowned at him. "That isn't fair."

"Life often isn't," informed the bigger boy, laconic. He moved away from the bed, toward the door where he paused, turned his head to stare Harry down. "Remember what I said: I don't often give warnings more than once."

Tugging the door open, he slipped outside and snapped it shut behind him with a rusty sort of squeak.

A breath Harry hadn't been aware he was holding escaped him in a rush and his tense shoulders unknotted themselves.

That was close. He didn't feel particularly excited with the prospect of how Riddle was going to react when he realised that Harry hadn't been exactly forthcoming with his information but he didn't trust the older boy, even if Riddle wasn't as antagonistic toward him as Smith and his lot.

The rustle of cloth met his ears followed by a slow dragging sound, he turned worried eyes on the small, triangular head of his companion.

"It's all clear," he hissed to his friend.

A small grass snake slithered out from between the thin mattress that made up Harry's bed, where it had taken refuge to hide from Riddle.

"Good," it responded.