I. Seraph, Descended
Wool's Orphanage, London, England
1947
Hermione. The name was winsome and elegant, smooth toffee on a burnt tongue. Lady Hermione - the virtuous and beautiful Queen of Sicily.
But it sounded ugly and weird coming from the mouth of Mrs. Cole.
"Miss Hermione Granger!"
When she screamed it, her voice was so high and sharp that it sliced his ears.
Tom had always wondered at the girl, so different from the usual timid newcomers to Wool's Orphanage. Everything about her was uncontrollable, from her wild hair, to her ripped stockings, to the way she would downright disobey Mrs. Cole. "Some ugly old matron can't tell me what to do!" she would tell him later, indignant. The girl was a nutter.
"FILCH-" said ugly old matron barked, "Ten Lashes to Miss Granger for stealing books from the library!"
Footsteps fluttered around him, light and airy like an apparition. A panicked deer skittered around the ground, oblivious to the dark-haired boy spying beneath the slats of the floorboards. The dull thud of Argus Filch's boots reverberated - her fragile dance was cut short.
Tom watched as the disciplinarian grabbed her arm and yanked her violently into the broom cupboard. He couldn't see them like he wanted to, but he heard the harsh slaps of wood and whimpered sobbing. He counted them. Ten.
They locked her in the boiler room afterwards, to reflect on her wrongdoings.
That's when he snuck in. "Why'd you steal library books?"
"Who are you?"
She was bruised and beaten and all dirtied up, but even so, she looked a little bit like an angel. Wavy hair, white dress.
Her parents died in the war, apparently. He figured that's why she acted like an escapee from a mental institution. Hermione.
"Tom." His name was ordinary, unimportant.
She wanted to spend break time underneath the willow by the stream.
"It's a haunted tree," Amy Benson had said, "you'd be crazy to go near it!" But that only made it all the more enticing to her, because Hermione was brave, and ghosts weren't real.
"Be careful," Tom Riddle had said, "Nasty stuff happens to people in my reading spot." And then that part of her - the crazy, insane part - wanted to see just what the sly devil of a boy would do.
So she sat by the willow tree, quickly getting absorbed in her pilfered book.
.
Billy Stubbs prowled over and tore it out of her hand. Crack. She felt the tear ripple through her arm from the force. Crack. Into her spine. 'Charles Dickens: The Complete Works' hung in disjointed segments of two, connected only by the tenuous backbinding.
"You ruined it you- aagh! You tore the spine!" She was on her feet in an instant, ready to yell and nag and stomp until he returned what was hers. Didn't he know that the spine was the most crucial component? Had he no respect at all for literature?!
The older boy sneered at her with rotten breath. "You's a rich little piggy no more, Granger."
Rich little piggy. Oh, how her blood boiled.
Hermione the mad-child launched herself at him with every intention to gouge his eyes out with her little nails, and bite his flesh with her dagger-teeth.
Tom watched from behind a tree. She knew he was watching. (She may have even liked it).
Her scuffle with Billy didn't last very long though. He grabbed her by the hair and threw her on the ground, but she kept kicking and clawing in a desperate attempt to inflict pain. In the end, he shoved her off and scampered away, book in hand.
She cried frustrated, feverish, voluptuous tears.
It was her most treasured copy of Dickens; a rare gem that hadn't been confiscated by that witch Mrs. Cole. The threads of the binding wove, like words and letters, through every fragile page to build beautiful stories. And Billy ripped it all up. The book died. Her face reddened in hot, wet anger.
Tom walked up to her with shadows dancing in his eyes. "You shouldn't be so attached to stuff. Otherwise they'll take it from you."
But Hermione wasn't listening to him. She noticed, instead, how the tree roots weaved their own ancient story through the dirt, like book bindings and words, a half-mortal mystery... She wished her mummy and da and Dickens had been half as sturdy. (Mummy and da, more so than Dickens).
In a boyish show of comfort, Tom handed her his own book, also stolen: 'The Last Days of Hitler.' She scrunched her nose up in distaste. Certainly, it was no 'Great Expectations.'
His eyes were trained, with tactful languor, on her. Devil eyes. A part of her - that crazy part, again - curled in delight when he looked at her like that. Curiously. Intently.
"I can make him pay, you know."
Possessively.
It happened in the cavernous confines of Church, where they were all seated at the pew in a tidy little row of tidy little orphans. Sunday's best.
Hermione leaned forward in rapt attention at the sermon; the dreary boy next to her all but rolled his eyes at the idea of his wild little pet domesticating herself for something as ludicrous as God.
"'Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereafter."
Tom stuck his pallid fingers through her own sweaty ones, and her interest in the sermon was lost, just like that. Something was going to happen. Tom smiled guilefully back at her questioning gaze.
Father Milgram looked down at his notes for reference, voice reverberating the hallowed halls. "There is a broad way and a narrow way. And very clearly does Christ discern that this broad way leads to destruction. Hell."
Nerves fluttered in dull apprehension. She turned her head sharply at their victim, old Billy Stubbs, Billy the Bully; she was interested in the revenge-work, interested to see what Tom had done. A tremor shook through Billy's body. Tom clutched her tighter, pinning her in place.
"Had we not better travel in this narrow way and finally reach heaven than travel in the broad way and go to hell? My children, are you in the narrow way?"
He was having a seizure. Billy's eyes rolled to the back of his head, and his bulking frame vibrated with the quivering intensity of a tuning fork. Torturous, keening silence. Painfully unnoticed by the adults. Hermione would've said something, if not for that ghastly voice in her head murmuring: no, but see what Tom did first.
"...We must all bear in mind; Hell is literal, Hell is eternal, Hell is horrid. Remember the sinners, from Revelations: 'their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur-"
There was choked heaving.
Billy stood up in a delirious stagger, a desperate grasp for help. Children screamed in terror and ran to the altar. The hulking mass of a boy gurgled noiselessly, frothing at the mouth, putrid foam molting from white spittle, hissing and spluttering, as Mrs. Cole and the Reverend gaped in shock.
Hermione was fixed in place; by Tom. He murmured darkly in her ear, voice ringing with mischief, "He isn't gonna bother us again, don't you think?"
Little pulses of current spasmed the length of her limbs. No, she supposed not.
.
Mrs. Cole shared the Physician's Report later, during evening supper: snake bite, from a garden variety black adder. Vipera berus.
Billy Stubbs was lucky to have lived.
Well, Hermione couldn't stomach any food that night because she was really very angry. Not only had Tom nearly killed Billy, but he'd also scared everyone and interrupted Father Milgram. Tom was a mean boy, and she didn't want to talk to him.
"Come on Hermione, it was all just good fun!"
No, she wouldn't listen.
But Tom was also the only one who cared about her. He snuck into the girls' room that night with an apple and some bread, because he knew she was hungry.
"How'd you manage to sneak in a snake to Church?"
Tom observed her carefully before deciding on a response. He shrugged blithely, his smile full of secrets and half-hidden mysteries.
"I can show you later, if you like."
He extended her the apple, all dark hair and dark eyes. All big and beautiful and… Go on, little Eve, that ghastly voice whispered temptingly. Take a bite.
"Well just so you know, you didn't need to do anything because I can take revenge for myself."
She snatched the apple from his thin hands and chomped into it obnoxiously. Crunch. The icy pulp bled into her mouth, crisp and wet.
Crunch. Crunch. Church. Church. Church.
She kept biting and chewing and falling, falling, falling until the apple was gone and the evil world that had cursed her with war and killed her mummy and da and Dickens finally slowed down, slowly, slowly, until it froze solid. Until she was frozen in this Woolly Orphanage that blanketed her and that riddle-of-a-boy, Tom.
Tom nibbled on his bread more politely, but watched her all the same: that half-angel, half-mad Hermione. His to keep.
[A/N: Et voila. The only way to improve at writing is to write more, no? Allow me to introduce a mutant little seedling that may just grow into a warped and wonderful tree... This story is dedicated to Convictforever, who mentioned a while back that she was curious about a certain villain's backstory - a short thanks to my first reviewer ever. :) ]