He had grown up in less than ideal circumstances, but he had survived – somehow.
School was interesting, both the things that he learned from a young age and then again when he found out about Magic and Hogwarts. He had the intelligence that made it fairly easy for those courses that didn't challenge him and the stubbornness to finish the ones that did. Knowledge was power, after all. He had heard that often.
He spent a lot of time in the libraries, whether the Muggle kind or the Wizarding kind. Not only once did he ask himself if it would be easier just to have his own. That was getting to be a common question and not just from asking himself. Some of his friends had asked the same thing and more than a few of them sounded quite serious about it.
He spent time on a broom up in the air to clear his mind more than a few times.
Professor Dumbledore had rewarded his studiousness with more work, proving that old adage that the best reward for a job well done was something harder. The boy, growing into a young man at this point didn't mind. He accepted the scholastic awards that Hogwarts had to offer and the suggestions of his teachers for this field of study or that, but it was a hard decision. There was so much out there that he could do that he felt paralyzed for choice.
It was the hushed and worried whispers of a Dark Wizard that was out killing people that set his mind on a course of action. It wasn't something that was going to make him rich over the course of his life, but considering the things that he was hearing about that did not matter once he put some thought into it.
What did matter was the trap that he and some of his friends walked into on a Hogsmeade weekend during his sixth year. It was the horrifying sight of the life slowly leaving the eyes of the girl he was sweet on that set his course. The wails of the bereaved, the distinct smells of the burning flesh, the sights of the blood that seeped down the wall made his choice all the more obvious. It was burned into himself in a way that he never forgot it.
Healing was the way to go. He would arm himself with the means to take the battle to Death and claw back every life that the Specter claimed. There would be a line drawn to say, "No further!" That line would be patrolled by him for the rest of his life, if needed.
And from the effort he put into his studies, he meant it.
Soon it was noticed. Madam Pomfrey took him on as an unofficial apprentice. She wasn't a Healing Mistress – there was really no such thing considering the traditional titles that his chosen profession used – but she was a damn good mediwitch and became his mentor. It would have been the height of folly to refuse to learn what she had to teach. There was quite a few things that she had to teach him about that he wouldn't have even known to consider, things that she would later call 'cutting out the unnecessary.' There were other, less unflattering terms, but that was the main thing she used.
Years later as he fought his battles, he would adopt that as his rallying cry.
She also opened his eyes to something that he didn't think of, and that was politics. She didn't like it any more than he did since there had been too many times in the past when it had gotten in the way of someone being helped. There were times when it helped, of course, but the examples of that were not nearly as numerous as when it hindered.
"People get greedy and you have to be able to discern that about them. Greedy people don't have your best interest in mind. Remember that," she'd told him.
He never forgot that. His best interest was to see people made whole, in mind, body, and spirit.
In his studies, he found that there was a rich body of work in Muggle medicine. The science that they used often approached the problems that he had to deal with on an everyday basis in different ways, but it was reproducible. He took to running experiments, following clinical trials and such things and corresponding with potion masters with ties to the Muggle world, such as muggleborn and halfbloods. They often were more aware of such things than their pureblood counterparts.
He didn't like to talk about that Dark Wizard, since the man was directly responsible for the deaths of too many people that he cared about. He acknowledged the irony in that the man was also responsible for the career field of his choice.
The words of his mentor where politics crossed his field were brought back to him in an unpleasant way one day. He had been to the Wizengamot on a rare visit to see a bill passed that would grant his department in St. Mungo's the funding to take a fact-finding and research mission to a couple of the more busy Muggle teaching hospitals and laboratories. It had been argued that knowledge was important, whether termed 'healing' or 'medical,' and there was a precious resource they could use – if only they made use of it.
The agreement that whatever they found out would be shared with every Magical Healer in the world was a given, and he and his colleagues were looking forward to seeing this approved and getting started. There had been quite a bit of interest about it in the debates. Many hands made for light work, after all, and this was related more than once whenever this disease or that was brought up.
Things were looking to be in the bag during that session when Lord Burke stood up. There was a hush and a feeling of something very wrong.
"I've been listening to this twaddle," he had sneered. "There will be no agreement with the Muggle filth contaminating our hallowed traditions."
He sat down, and with that, the motion and debate was effectively dead. The Dark alliances that Burke headed followed wherever he led. There was a couple of more valiant efforts to try to swing the vote back to at least just over parity, but it fell short the moment Lord Burke resumed his seat.
The final vote was shy of passing by twelve. So close yet so far, as the matter couldn't be brought up for another year. Or more, if another bill put forward by the Dark passed. It prevented anything like this being raised ever again.
That night was a subdued affair for everyone who had worked to get it to this point, but no more so than the Healer who'd put more of himself into it than he'd ever thought he would. His mentor, Madam Pomfrey commiserated with him about the problems – and offered up a few pithy observations about the odious man that had so briefly uttered the derailment of what they wanted to do – but also asked him if there was anything else in the Muggles' 'medical' field that could be adapted. Her voice was knowing as she asked him that question.
That had prompted an arrested thought. His mind was diverted into something he'd read.
There wasn't so much of what they called 'technology' as there were plenty of advances in what they called 'chemistry.' This brought about medicines and such things that he could possibly use to help others live a long and happy life free of pains and other ailments. This was assuming that the Dark Wizard that remained on a lot of minds didn't steal the life from those he was trying to assure that same life remained firmly in their grasps. The sticks-in-the-mud didn't need to know about that.
He needed to play catch up, however. Potions had been a bit of a struggle for the first few years at Hogwarts, but he got past that block and figured out how to abolish them if they cropped up again. As he had a literal mind, sometimes a literal solution helped out. The catch up came in learning about this chemistry.
So, after his shifts at St. Mungo's, he sunk himself into learning about chemistry. As it turned out, he needed to first learn some types of mathematics that had only been touched upon in his Arithmancy courses at Hogwarts.
After a protracted sigh, he worked out the correspondence courses that he needed and dug in. For the next six months, he got used to little to no sleep again. Poppy Pomfrey made the observation that it was residency all over again. He didn't dignify that with an answer, as he was well aware that snapping at her was the fastest way to find stinging hexes directed at certain sensitive parts.
Twice was two times too many, thank you. He learned that lesson well.
As time passed, he got comfortable with the numbers needed to calculate shells and electrons, bondings and masses, weights and a whole host of other things that he hadn't a clue about before. After that, the chemistry and potions marriage blended together easily under his hand.
He fell in love with this new knowledge. The sneakiness he used to introduce it into the Wizarding World was worthy of a certain Hogwarts House, he thought. The topper was using some of the Muggle publications in the footnotes of his papers without any of the purebloods catching on.
It was one day, when a dark-haired beauty walked in that he fell in love of a different sort.
Well, he fell right in front of her when his foot caught the leg of a recently-moved table. It brought her down too and the only reason he hadn't noticed her landing on his legs was the fact that there was a textbook falling from her arms that landed right on his nose.
Thankfully, he held his tongue after that. In the middle of the profuse apologies bubbling from her and the blood dripping from his nose, he noticed that she had held a book in her arms. That book had done a real number on his nose, but that was not important all of a sudden. He stopped the worried babble from her when he withdrew the same chemistry book from his bag with one hand as the other held a handkerchief to his nose. His eyes were wide as they drank in the sight of her.
From that memorable meeting on, they were rarely seen apart.
She shared his goals. There had been times she related that she had seen some of the things that he'd seen and some of the things that he'd never considered, and wanted to do something about it. He held her as she sobbed.
She shared the work. Her path had been remarkably similar. There were a few instances of name-calling, jeering derision, and being passed over because of her muggleborn status. She had persevered despite all that. He congratulated her and told her how proud he was of her.
She shared the vision that he had. She knew that something had to be done, but until she met him she didn't know quite how. He welcomed her into his quest.
Soon, she shared his name.
With her, he was propelled to greater heights and motivated to more efforts to fight against the degradation of the Magical World. On the last day of their honeymoon, he swore his life to rebuilding it and fixing the Magical World. It was going to die, if something wasn't done and he was a Healer.
For them. For himself. For her.
His name was Tom Riddle, and he was going to save them all.
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Endnote:
Yep, like just about everything I do, this is an Alternate Universe story – but what a story idea, huh? I have so much fun doing those types of stories that I don't even know if I can write something strictly canon-compliant for longer than a one-shot. Even then I have problems keeping myself from dashing off in unknown directions.