Tom Riddle's War Part Ten: Boom
DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter and its characters are the creation of JK Rowling and are owned by JK Rowling, Warner Brothers, and Wizarding World. Daria is the creation of Glen Eichler and is the property of MTV Viacom. I own neither franchise. I do not want, expect, or deserve financial compensation for my writing. I am writing for my own amusement and ego gratification.
Still, I do retain the rights to Colonel Marco Battaglia, Hereward Granger, Horatio Dursley, and Nahum Snape.
Author's Note: This is an alternate universe Harry Potter story, set in the same universe as my Daria Ravenclaw (Harry Potter/Daria Morgendorffer) fan fiction series and years before most of the canon Daria characters were even born.
What might the consequences might have been if Tom Riddle, Senior hadn't been home at the Riddle Manor when the future Lord Voldemort came to call in July of 1943?
This story is rated M for violence, cruelty, adult situations, and coarse language. This is a war story. If you are looking for a cheerful Harry Potter fan fiction with good values and moral uplift, read no further. This is NOT that kind of tale.
Tom Riddle's War*Tom Riddle's War*Tom Riddle's War
Boom
Colonel Battaglia knew about the lorry. The lorry had broken down when a previous convoy had rumbled through in the dark. Fortunately for the convoy, the lorry had been the next-to-last vehicle in the procession and the last one had carefully inched its way around it before driving away. It was now early afternoon and the Inglesi still hadn't moved it out of the way, although their reasons for not doing so were not surprising: some sniping led them to believe that lingering near the abandoned lorry was foolish in the extreme. He wanted the lorry to remain there as a traffic bottleneck, something that would slow enemy convoys down to a crawl so that he could destroy them. Later the next morning, it looked like his intuition would pay off; a new enemy convoy rounded the curve then came to a halt facing the broken-down vehicle.
-(((O-O)))—
Tom Riddle was horrified by the sight of the broken-down lorry. "STOP!" he shouted. Private Snape stomped on the brake pedal, bringing the Bedford to a halt ten feet from the derelict.
"OUT!" he said to Granger. Granger got out of the cab. So did he.
"WHAT is this bloody thing doing in the MIDDLE of the road and WHY is this thing still HERE?!" he said, seething with a fear-fueled rage.
"I don't know, Sir," said Granger.
Tom was frightened. He was certain he was within the enemy's artillery range, and probably within mortar range as well.
"Granger!" he shouted, pointing at the abandoned Bedford. "Get in the cab and see if you can get that bloody thing going!"
Granger walked over, got in the cab, and pressed the starter button. The motor turned over. Good, he thought. He looked at the gauges: the battery worked, and there was plenty of petrol. He'd put it into gear, then move it to one side. He put it into gear and discovered that the lorry wouldn't move.
-(((O-O)))-
Colonel Battaglia had heard the rumbling of the convoy from several miles back and had sent an observer up the hillside with binoculars and a flashlight to signal its arrival at the road block. He wished he had a radio, but he didn't. For that matter, he wished he was in a better position with better ordinance, but he'd fight with what he had.
He looked at the hillside with a pair of binoculars. Sardi was a good man: cool, experienced, and would let him know when the enemy was in position.
He waited. He didn't see any movement where Sardi was hiding; the corporal was hiding. Then he saw a flashlight light click on and off one, two, three, four times. The enemy was where he wanted them.
He thought about partridges again. There was one time when several of them had clustered together fat, happy, and utterly oblivious to him as he slowly raised his shotgun, aimed, and then pulled the trigger. These English were as sleek and as stupid as the partridges.
"Put a high-explosive shell into the breach," he said to the loader. The gunner, a German the Colonel had appropriated for this duty, did so. He closed the breach.
"FIRE!" shouted Colonel Battaglia.
-(((O-O)))-
Hereward Granger got out of the cab and shook his head. He squatted down under the rear of the Bedford and studied its undercarriage. He then walked back to Riddle.
"It won't go, Sir," he said.
"I can see that!" said Tom. "Why the Hell won't it go?"
"It looks like a broken axle, Sir," said Granger. "If we want to get past this spot, we'll have to move it out of the way somehow."
"Well, we'll just shove it over the side and keep on," said Tom. It was bloody obvious. Why didn't this blockheaded son of a bricklayer see it?
"Sir," said Granger. "we're on a switchback. if we shove it off the side of the road, it will block the roadway again, and we'll be in the same fix on the way back."
"Granger," Riddle shouted, "I'm senior to you. I want that bloody thing moved!"
"Go round up some of the other drivers and we'll push it over the side. We'll even use the Bedford to give it a shove if we have to!" Tom was so engrossed in bollicking Granger that he didn't take notice of the incoming shell until it was too late.
-(((O-O)))—
Decades later, Daria Morgendorffer's younger sister Veronica heard the story of the Golden BB, the one-in-a-million projectile that defies all odds and successfully downs some high-tech, multi-million-dollar attack plane kitted out with the latest gadgets and turns it into flaming wreckage.
Colonel Battaglia's first shell wasn't a golden BB; it impacted the hillside on the far side of the roadway. The blast and flying rock shredded the bodies of Tom Riddle and Sub-Lieutenant Granger as effectively as a shell of shrapnel, blowing what was left of them just behind the rear fender of their Bedford.
The second shell had a much greater impact. It hit the lead lorry broad-side, its explosion detonating the ammunition it carried, causing an even bigger explosion that not only wrecked several of the lorries behind it, but utterly obliterated the bodies of their drivers and assistants. When the men from the war graves commission came by to search for the remains of the fallen soldiers long after the Sicilian campaign was over, they were forced to give up looking for the remains of the occupants of the lead vehicles. There simply wasn't enough of them left to bury.
Colonel Battaglia had been given eight shells. He continued shelling the convoy until he ran out of ammunition.
"What now?" said Feldwebel Shratt, the German gunner he'd borrowed.
"We get under cover," said Colonel Battaglia. "These Inglesi aren't total idiots. They'll guess what happened. They'll be firing back or they'll send attack planes."
-(((O-O)))—
Grimmauld Place, London, UK
Fifty-Plus Years Later
Daria preferred to stay out of the Order's business; she preferred to remain a peripheral, not a principal. But that didn't mean that she wasn't curious or that she thought that knowing something about the Dark Lord's biography wasn't important. She'd been given the chance to talk to her headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, one the experts, and seized it with both hands.
"So Tom Riddle is supposed to have killed his grandparents," said Daria.
"That is what I believe," said Professor Dumbledore.
"So when did Tom Riddle make his house call?" asked Daria.
"It was July, 1943," said Professor Dumbledore.
July, 1943, thought Daria. Something wriggled in the back of Daria's mind.
"Was Tom's father there?" asked Daria.
"He wasn't," said Professor Dumbledore. "Tom Senior had joined the Muggle Army."
"And Tom Riddle Senior never come home from the war," said Daria.
"No," said Professor Dumbledore. "I'd assumed that Tom Junior caught up with him somewhere in Europe and killed him there."
Something was nagging at the back of Daria's mind, something important, something that needed attention.
"Maybe, maybe not," said Daria. "Could I get back to you later, Sir? I think I've got something."
She sat down with a pencil and paper and began sketching. Her version of the Sight was idiosyncratic. True, she was better than fair at palmistry, tea-leaf reading, shuffling tarot cards, and crystal ball gazing, but she also found that her visions for the future could come out while drawing. She let go her conscious mind, her pencil would start moving across paper, and when she came out of it, she had something to think about. After about a half an hour or so, she found that she'd drawn a triskelion with a face in the middle. For some reason she thought it might be southern European; most northern European triskelions had their legs wearing something. She knew it meant something, but announcing her discovery could wait. She set the sketch aside to discuss with some of the members of the order at dinner.
Surprisingly, it wasn't Granger who was the first to identify what she'd drawn, it was Bill Weasley.
"Sicily!" he said. "How did you think that one up, Lady Morgendorffer?" Bill had started calling her that as a tease. At first it irritated her, but she now put up with it.
"Good question," said Daria, "My version of the Sight can be a little weird at times." Something clicked in her brain as it made associations. "But I think I might know when and where the Dark Lord's father died."
"So when do you think He's Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's father died?" asked Bill.
"I think he died either in July or August, 1943. The Allied invasion of Sicily took place in July of 1943," said Daria.
"What?" said Ron. "Who invaded who?" Hermione smacked him and motioned for him to be quiet.
"The US and the British Armies invaded Sicily in July 1943 during the Second Great Muggle War," said Daria. "A lot of people got killed and wounded in that campaign. I don't remember just how many British casualties there were, but there were more than a few."
She turned to Ron and gave him what he'd called her scary smile. "Wanna bet that's where Pop Riddle bought it?" she said.
"You can, little brother," said Fred (or was it George?).
"But we won't," they chorused.
"We like our money" said Fred (Or was it George?)
"In our pockets," said George (Or was it Fred?).
"And not in Blackendorffer's," they chorused.
"So you think it's possible that Tom's father died in Sicily?" said Professor Dumbledore from the adult end of the table.
"I think it's possible," said Daria. "I think it's more than possible."
"I hadn't thought of that, Miss Morgendorffer," said Professor Dumbledore.
"Well, sir, you were preoccupied," said Daria. She shrugged. "Sometimes you have to think like a Muggle."
The End
Tom Riddle's War*Tom Riddle's War*Tom Riddle's War
Author's Note: Nothing left of this story except a cheat sheet to answer a few questions. If you liked this story, please write a review.