Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or the world.
Chapter 6- Riddle Manor - Little Hangleton - October 8th, 1943
The day was foggy as Helen moved past the windows on the third floor of the manor. Padding her way downstairs towards the main dining room, the floor plan of Riddle manor buried in her subconscious from her childhood, she thought of the turn her life had taken.
If someone had told her years ago that she would be back here, she would have laughed in their face.
Even five years ago had been significantly different from the life she leads now. She'd been happily married and living in relative safety in the Caribbean, even with the war going on. She thought of Antoine and her heart ached, what would he say in regard to everything she'd had to do? Would he have supported her decision made at the helm of fear for their child? Would he have had a better option available in that vast mind of his?
She entered the dining room, greeting the maids who were in the process of laying out tea and scones.
Every day since his death, Helen stopped to consider what he might have done if faced with the same misfortunes as she.
Maybe she had made the wrong choice coming back to Britain; of changing her surname back to Riddle; or changing her child's name to match, decisions made to help provide them with safe passage back to Britain. When she'd heard from her daughter a year ago, that despite the war being fought around the world, there was another Hermione was facing for daring to be magical with non-magical parentage, she'd been horrified.
How could she protect her daughter when she had no magic?
So, she had done what any other concerned mother would do and had written to the Headmistress of her daughter's school to request advice. She'd realized that her requests could have been brushed off, that her worries would be seen as inconsequential. Fortunately, that was not the case, for Headmistress Béchamp had sympathized with her. She had explained that she, herself, had once been in Hermione's shoes, as a nouveau-sang.
Her advice, however, had curdled Helen's stomach for more personal reasons.
'Go to Britain,' she'd written, 'it is safe for magicals of Hermione's standing there.'
Going to Britain had meant prostrating herself to her family, especially if she were fleeing there alone with her daughter.
She had considered for years while Antoine was still alive that maybe they could all go together and avoid the Riddle family. After all, she had missed her home country; but it never panned out or it was never the right time, and when Antoine passed, she forgot about it entirely.
To do it now she would have to write specifically to her first-cousin-once-removed, who was head of the family, Thomas Riddle. They originally had been furious to learn of her marriage to a black man, despite his profession as a doctor. Thomas Riddle had written to her, offering his son, Tom's, hand in marriage to 'save' her from her fate but later disowned her when she refused while notifying him of the birth of her daughter, Jeanne Hermione Granger in September of 1925.
She stirred her tea, caught in recollection.
It had been September of 1942 when she'd reconnected with him for the first time in fifteen years. He postured like she knew he would, but had made her an offer nonetheless.
She could return to Britain with her daughter, on the condition that she married Tom to beget a 'proper' heir. Ignoring the revulsion that felt like a rock in her throat, she had agreed and had begun gathering and preparing the appropriate papers, including Hermione's transfer to Hogwarts, the school in Scotland. She made sure to include her correspondence with Thomas Riddle, in the event that they were apprehended.
By January, everything had been ready and Helen had planned for them to leave as soon as Hermione arrived home in June.
However, when Hermione had popped into existence in the small courtyard of their Martinique home in February, she'd known something was wrong. Her girl had been shaking and in clear distress, so Helen had decided that they would leave sooner.
Despite leaving months ahead of schedule, they arrived in Britain in July.
They had spent months laying low in different French cities, avoiding both German soldiers and soldiers of Grindelwald. Her daughter's life depended on both never catching them; one because of her status as a nouveau-sang, the other because of the colour of her skin. Helen was not proud of the many things she'd had to do, but she would have done them all again to keep her girl safe.
She sipped her tea, trying to warm herself from the icy hand that gripped her spine from the memories of their time in France, changing her train of thought to the murder of her relatives.
Upon arriving in Little Hangleton, they'd found out that Thomas Riddle, his wife Mary and her supposed betrothed, Tom had been murdered by the degenerate that lived in the shack off the outskirts of the property.
Helen only vaguely remembered the Gaunts as fringe people who had always spit at her as a child. She recalled they'd had a girl a couple of years younger than her; she'd been a lank, skinny thing with pale green eyes that had pointed in opposite directions.
She'd found that after investigations—her kept correspondence with Thomas Riddle proving to be paper gold in protecting their innocence in regards to the murders—that Tom had married the girl, Merope. He'd apparently left her once he tired of her and it was assumed that she eventually died a pauper on the streets of London since she'd never come back. If that had been the truth of it, Helen would not have blamed the brother, more so if it hadn't negatively affected herself and Hermione.
Putting her teacup down, she glanced around the dining room, in all its utter opulence.
The Riddles had always been a very wealthy family but they were not old money, nor were they titled. No, the Riddles had made their money in less savoury ways than that.
They had started in trafficking and prostitution houses in the early 1700s, shifting towards opium dens in the early 1800s until they tried their hand in weapons manufacturing in the 1850s with the opening of Riddle Arms and Weaponry. It had started small, making pistols for domestic use before growing to include rifles that they supplied overseas, to eventually supplying heavy arms to the British army during the war of 1914-1918 and continued to do so for the current war.
She selected a scone, generously applying clotted cream to it.
Now, however, with all the Riddles dead with the exception of herself and her daughter; both of them being women, Helen was being pressured by both foreign and domestic investors to either merge or sell. Letters were becoming more and more demanding; with Hermione at Hogwarts for her final year of schooling, she hadn't known what to do.
That is until her girl had written her about a Tom Riddle at her school.
So, Helen investigated. Positively turning the manor inside out until she'd eventually discovered a journal that had belonged to her cousin, hidden in between the canvas and mounting of a painting in his suite. It was in this journal that Tom recalled his marriage to Merope, writing of enchantments and bewitchment. He described having no free will and feeling trapped in his own mind while a stranger in his body lived his life for him. He wrote how he had suddenly been freed and of being told by his 'wife' that she was pregnant.
Traumatized, he had done the only thing he could think of...which was run home.
He wrote of travelling to London years later to find out what happened to her. It had taken him a couple of months but he had tracked the only lead he found, only to discover a boy who looked remarkably like himself, except with his mother's eyes. Tom Snr. confessed that he had panicked, believing this boy to be as unnatural as his mother and so he had left him where he was.
He went on to write in this journal that he felt guilty for abandoning a child who was obviously his own but admitted to being unable to look into those pale eyes without being reminded of his time trapped.
Had Helen not had a daughter who was a witch, she admittedly would not have sympathized with her cousin so quickly. Not because she did not believe him to have been assaulted, but more that she'd have believed him to have lost his mental faculties, speaking of bewitchment.
She did, however, have a witch for a daughter and knowing what she knew of the magical world, she could not—in good faith—fault Tom for his actions.
Having read her daughter's textbooks each summer she was home—to have a better understanding of the type of world she was giving her girl away to—she'd discovered both the good and the horrifying aspects of the magical world. Despite her reservations about it, she knew Hermione loved this world, so she decided that she would support her daughter.
This, however, did not prevent her from sympathizing with the boy. He was no older than Hermione and he'd grown up having no one.
She'd seen at that moment, that she could bring the younger Tom into the family. She could teach him about the business and even instate him as heir to it to appease investors that there was a man in charge.
Helen would, of course, offer to run it herself and allow him to focus on his life in the magical world. In the end, it kept Riddle wealth in Riddle hands, and furthermore, protected the boy from conscription into the war, which as an orphan would have been mandatory for him once he finished school, as he'd be of age.
The sound of pecking broke her reverie and she turned her head to see an owl at the window of the dining room.
She requested the maids to take a break and leave her for a private moment, to which they gladly obliged.
Getting up and making sure first that she was truly alone, she approached and opened the window deftly to allow a great horned owl onto the ledge. Quickly, she took the letter from its leg and nodded towards the top of the bookshelf beside the window where she had learned to keep water and treats for visiting owls.
When Hermione was first found to be a witch, Antoine purchased an owl for family use; regardless that no owl could fly over the ocean to deliver a letter. She'd only really delivered Hermione's letters from the school to the international post office in Paris. Antoine had named her Coco because they could always find her up in the palm trees in the summer when Hermione was home. She found, however, that visiting owls tended to nip if not offered something for their services.
Popping open the wax seal, she read Tom Riddle's response and folded it again.
It was certainly quick, she worried, tapping the letter against the inside of her palm.
She noted that she hadn't received anything from Hermione but she disregarded the thought. She figured it might still be on its way since she didn't spy Coco anywhere outside, observing that the earlier fog had lifted. The visiting owl hopped down from the shelf and hooted to be let out, and though she felt silly talking to an animal, she told it to wait while she wrote her response. A couple of minutes later, she returned with her letter, inviting Tom Riddle to stay with them during the Christmas hols. She wrote that she would explain more to him then and see if he still agreed.
She tied the envelope to the owl's leg and let it out, all the while, wondering what Antoine would have done in this situation.
A/N: I'm aware that Tom Riddle was born in 1926 in canon. I've changed it for this story, shifting his birth year slightly earlier so I could use include major parts of the war and accounting for the threat of conscription.