Hermione's first morning at the orphanage is not pleasant.
When she wakes up in her own bed (which is shabby, but very clean, much like the rest of the orphanage) and looks around to see a grey, sad-looking room, she is bewildered. What is she doing here? Where is here? Is her mother looking for her? Then she's petrified. Something's happened. Something really, truly terrible happened, didn't it?
Suddenly, that sticky cobweb of sleep and dreaming slithers away from her mind. Everything becomes clear. Hermione remembers the pliers and running away, the strange policeman with the funny leg and walking with him through towering iron gates at midnight. Her mother must be furious with her for running. But she can't go back to her now, can she? And Papa vanished a long time ago...
She is alone now.
The man in the bowler hat, Moody, had brought her here. When they arrived at the orphanage late at night, a middle-aged woman named Mrs. Cole had fondly called him by this strange name. She had appeared at the gate in her bedraggled nightgown and frowned at the sight of them; a policeman and street urchin drenched with rain and mud. Before Hermione was allowed to come inside, Mrs. Cole made her remove her filthy shoes and throw them away in the street. They would give her new shoes at the orphanage, Mrs. Cole had said. Well, Hermione came to find the shoes were not new at all. They were used and a size too small on her right foot besides, but they were new to her, which must be what Mrs. Cole had meant.
Hermione's bedroom is tiny and narrow, but it feels enormous to her without anyone else there to fill it. She buries her face in the thin, limp pillow under her and bawls until the sun rises.
Later on, Mrs. Cole finds her like this. Hermione is afraid for a moment that she will punish her for making such a ruckus in the morning, but a look of understanding comes over the woman's face. She sits on the foot of the bed and soothes Hermione, coaxing her to go down to the eating hall and meet the other children. "It isn't all bad, dear," she says to her back, which is quivering with sobs. "You'll see. I promise." She explains that Hermione can make friends here and maybe even find a new home, with loving parents and a dog or two. I don't want new parents and I hate dogs, Hermione thinks, but somehow she is calmed by the matron's words suddenly. She sits up, wiping the tears from her face with the drab sleeve of the grey nightgown - also used - that a helper had given her the night before.
After Hermione changes into 'uniform,' she follows Mrs. Cole into a spotless but obviously ancient hallway. The tile floors are black and white, and the few children up at this hour fulfill their morning duties. Scrubbing corners and stairs, Hermione swerves to avoid the soapy sponge here and tin bucket there. Mrs. Cole nods approvingly and makes corrections as they pass the children, who stare curiously after them and laugh when they see Hermione. She is suddenly aware of her bushy hair, larger and frizzier than usual from the rain yesterday. She turns red and avoids meeting anyone's eyes.
I don't think I'll like it here very much, she thinks glumly. The rest of the orphanage is as grey and washed out as her uniform and shoes, scrubbed to dull perfection. There is mismatching furniture in many of the rooms and Mrs. Cole keeps up a comforting stream of blabber as they make their way to the eating hall. Hermione's attention is only distracted from the macabre setting of her new home by a few choice words, like not many toys and there's a lovely little beach we go to once a year. Oh, you'll love it, dear, it's easy to learn how to swim – and especially, the library.
"Library?" she says, straightening. "You have a library?"
"Oh, in a manner of speaking." Mrs. Cole shrugs modestly. "It's more of a relaxing room, really. It's got a few comfy chairs and some picture books there. You like to read, dear?"
Hermione nods. She would have to investigate this so-called library later.
"Here we are," Mrs. Cole says, stopping them inside the eating hall. The hall is actually a large, dark square room with the only light entering from two barred windows on each side of the back wall. About six or so long tables are jam-packed with children varying in all ages. Hermione watches a helper in a white apron spoon a greyish gook onto a little girl's plate. She grimaces. Is everything grey in this place?
"You'll fit in just fine," Mrs. Cole assures her, patting Hermione firmly on the head and rattling her teeth. The matron nudges her forward. "Go on, take a plate and pick a seat. Mind your manners." She sticks the whistle hanging from her neck between her yellow teeth and walks back the way they came, folding her hands behind her back like a drill sergeant. The helper spooning gook hurries to her side. When the doors swing shut behind them, Hermione turns toward the other children with an audible gulp. They aren't staring at her like they had this morning, which is a relief. She would prefer to be invisible than picked on.
Hermione looks at a girl with reddish skin and mousy blonde hair. The children around her start laughing now that Mrs. Cole has disappeared. They seem happy, but there is an underlying glumness to the sound of shouts and wild screams. No matter how clean the orphanage they live in is, Hermione thinks, it is still a rather glum place to grow up.
She bites the nail of her thumb, contemplating, and eventually wanders over to the table with the girl. Its inhabitants notice her immediately.
"Who're you?" says one boy, sizing her up with cold blue-grey eyes. Those eyes widen at the sight of her hair.
"I'm Hermione," she says, trying for a smile. "What's your name?"
The boy sneers at her. "Your hair looks like the wrong end of a broomstick, Hermy." He grins nastily and his friends guffaw at her, throwing bits of gook at her hair to see if it sticks. Hermione gasps in outrage and quickly stands again, grabbing her plate and moving further down the table to sit by the girl with mousy hair. The boys laugh harder. "Coward!" they shout.
The blonde girl looks up, glances at Hermione (and her horrendous hair, naturally), and she finally looks at the snickering dolts. She sighs. "You're new?" she asks.
Hermione nods meekly. "Yes. I'm Hermione Granger."
"I've neva heard o' that name before."
"What's your name?" she says, trying to be nice.
"Martha." Martha shoots another distasteful look at the boys down the table, muttering under her breath. "Those rats are Billy Stubbs, Eric Whalley, Sean O'Sullivan, and Peter Kowsakowski."
"They're not very kind," Hermione says, catching Martha's tone. "Are you friends with them?"
"Not for a thousand shillings!" Martha scoffs. "They're harmless really, but not a good lot to fall in with. Too stupid." Her eyes narrow into slits and she looks around Hermione, at something behind her. "You want to know who you should really stay away from...?" she asks, dropping her voice. Hermione nods. Martha puts her mouth - sticky with gook - to Hermione's ear. She breathes in a hot voice, "Tom Riddle."
"Who?" Hermione turns around, craning her neck like an ostrich to see who Martha is glaring so intensely at. Martha wrenches her back around by the arm. Hard.
"Do you have dung for brains!" she demands. Hermione frowns. "No, that's impossible," she says stiffly. Martha rolls her eyes at her.
"Look again, but don't be so obvious," she says lowly. "He's wearing the grey sweater."
"Everyone is wearing a grey sweater."
"He has black hair and creepy-looking eyes."
Hermione nods. "Okay." Carefully, she looks over her shoulder, as if stretching her back, and peers at the faces behind them until her head feels like it's going to pop off her neck. With a sigh, Martha turns her in the opposite direction, sticking out her finger in emphasis.
"What are you, blind? He's right there."
"I'm not blind-" Hermione starts to say waspishly, but her retort falls short at the sight of an extremely handsome boy sitting across the room, at his very own table with a finished plate of food and a napkin neatly spread across his lap. His eyes are downcast as he picks apart his gook with a knife and fork, never eating it. She can't tell if they are indeed creepy from this distance.
"That's him," Martha says, satisfied.
Hermione nods, but she barely hears her. Why is the boy all alone? she wonders. He looks so serious... It's almost as if he is an adult except that he looks no older than the rest of them. Suddenly, he pulls out a notebook and sets it on the table, scribbling intensely. Whatever he's up to seems to be very important.
"What's he doing?" Hermione asks out loud. Martha peeks back at Tom Riddle one last time and turns them both firmly around until they are no longer facing him.
"I think he's making up spells or some evil," Martha says conspiratorially. "He's a witch of some sort."
"I don't believe in that poppycock." Biting her nail, Hermione turns toward the gook on her plate. It seems to shiver when she looks at it. "How old is he?"
"Ten." Martha takes a chomp of a greasy bacon strip. Hermione notes that Tom Riddle is one year her senior. "He's lived in the orphanage his whole life. He was born here, which is very odd." She reveals this in an ominous and knowing way, as if telling a well-known ghost story that never fails to induce goosebumps and spooked shudders no matter how many times it's been told.
"So what's the big deal?" Hermione says, pressing. "He doesn't seem creepy to me."
Martha snorts. "You don't know Riddle. No one likes him and he has no friends and he doesn't want none either. Listen-" She sweeps a glance around them, one that surprises Hermione. The look in and of itself is full of... fear. "He's a little funny in the head except Mrs. Cole said no one ever dropped him as a baby. He's scary."
"Scary, how?"
"I'd rather not say." Martha fidgets. Swats at a scavenging fly. "He makes bad things happen, so we just leave him alone. He likes to be alone anyway."
Hermione frowns. Who would like being alone? She hates being alone. Then there's no one to tell all the facts she knows to, to ask questions, to read with or laugh with or smile at…
She finds herself thinking of Mum and Papa. The thought of her parents puts her in a glum mood and she forgets about Tom Riddle for the rest of breakfast.
It is seven-thirty at night when Hermione can finally go to the library.
She had been very busy today, spending most of her time with Mrs. Cole and touring the orphanage some more. The matron told her about the orphanage's practices, weekly trips to the chapel for worship, and all the rules. There were so many rules. Mrs. Cole said she was to get a chores list soon, but that it could wait until she settled in some more. Hermione didn't mind. She is used to cleaning by now. What would the Weasleys do without her now? she wonders.
Hermione holds her breath and slowly pushes open the door to the library, groaning under her touch. Peeking her head inside, she is severely disappointed.
Mrs. Cole was not being so modest after all.
The library is nothing more than a tiny room, much like all the other boring grey rooms of the orphanage. A few rows of half-empty bookshelves and a raggedy, outdated armchair greets her. It is nothing like the beautiful library from her old charter school. That was bigger than the eating hall and filled with more books than England had castles.
Still, it's better than nothing, she reminds herself.
With this uplifting (sort of) thought in mind, Hermione dives into the shelves.
About twenty minutes later, the-creaky-old-timer door gives a groan, and Hermione nearly drops Great Expectations in her fright. She catches it barely though and darts behind the very end of the row into hiding. Squinting over the top of the book cover, through yellowing pages and squelched eyelashes, she sees a boy walk inside her newfound safe haven.
Looking closer, she sees the boy is no less than the orphanage's personal ghoul.
It's Tom Riddle.