Harry Potter Alphabet
In which there is one character and one shot for each letter
In case you didn't remember, Billy Stubbs was a muggle boy at the orphanage with Tom Riddle. (He was the one who had his rabbiot hung after a fight with Tom) This one-shot is Billy reflecting solely on Tom Riddle and his effects on the children of the orphanage.
B is for Billy Stubbs
Tom Riddle, the Golden Boy of the Orphanage.
He was so irritating.
Better than us because he got a scholarship to go away to school.
Better, because he could charm all the adults.
Always better.
Even when we fought him, we suffered.
Not that he was strong enough to overpower us, he was always beaten to a pulp.
No, strange things just "happened" after he got beaten up.
And if they happened to those that were responsible, it was a coincidence and the blame could never be pinned to him.
After he went away to school, we could rest easy until the summer.
We were still always compared to him and found lacking.
When he came back over the summer, it was torture for us.
He could always find some way to torment us without being caught.
Not that we had any proof, besides that sickening smile of his and the way he seemed to rejoice in our suffering.
I was glad when he finished his last year of schooling and didn't come back.
He was beginning to wear all of the children down like an ocean wearing down a rock.
In a way that seemed gentle at first, and was not apparent.
Little by little, year by year, until that rock became a little pebble.
That was how Tom Riddle made us feel, like we were a little pebble and he was the ocean.
He had to prove it to us constantly. Almost as if he were proving it to himself.
When he got back from school each year, it got worse.
He would find new ways to torment us, and even sneakier ways of not getting caught.
It got to the point where the little ones would run away from him screaming when they saw him.
He would just charm the Orphanage ladies, make them think it was all a game, and then hunt down the children to punish them for running away.
That's how it was, he would punish us for any little thing.
You took the last dessert, you were punished.
You woke up in the middle of the night, you were punished.
You bothered Tom in any little way, you were punished.
Near the end he just seemed to delight in inflicting pain and punished us when he felt like it.
The days of beating him up were over, now he mentally tormented, us day and night.
Sometimes you could catch a glimpse of the madness I believed he held within.
Like when he hung my rabbit, that was one of his first tricks and I don't know how he managed it without getting caught.
He was forever bullying us when he was at the Orphanage, the only home the rest of us had ever known.
We plotted and planned while he was gone to bring him down, but it never worked.
It usually only increased the punishments.
Eventually he had all the others eating out of his hand.
No one knew where he got the power, but in the end everyone wanted some.
Except for me that is.
I could still see that madness in the gleam of his eye, in the movement of his arm, and in the expressions on his face.
To him we were not real people, only something to be manipulated.
A way for him to feel important though he was only an orphan and alone in the world like us.
I was the only obstacle left in his way.
He became a hurricane rather than the ocean, and I a boulder.
In his path merely to spite him, forcing him to use every trick in the book and then some.
I think that was what, in the end, drove me mad.
Now all I can do is think about the shortcomings of Tom Riddle.
I cannot work and I can't even think without him popping up in there.
Even though I am now free of his torture, I am still experiencing it mentally.
I have tried to tell people that he had some sort of power unknown to the rest of us.
I was just labeled as mad and carted off here.
Here it is safe and I know he cannot get to me.
Finally after all those years of torment, I am free.
Next up: C for Charity Burbage