Note: This is a transition chapter so you have the background information for the main part of the story.
Also Note: If you have already read part of this story, this chapter was chapter 2. I've since added a chapter between it and the first chapter because I thought chronologically it made more sense to put the chapters that way. Although, since the chapters aren't closely related, you could read them in the reverse order.
On an unusually warm winter's day in Marrakech, Morocco, a small boy with brown hair peered through the iron railings of a balcony to the courtyard below. He was watching his shara, who was reclining on the lounge and reading a book, though it must not have been a very good one, as his brow was furrowed and there was a distinct tightening of his lips that only came when he was displeased. The boy watched him anxiously. He didn't like it when his shara was displeased. His shara was the most important person in his life, even if he could be a bit scary.
At least his shara was displeased in this form, though, thought the boy. His shara displeased was always scary, but he was even scarier when he was in the other form—the one of red eyes and pale skin and no nose. The boy had asked him once why he chose to be so ugly sometimes, and his shara had laughed, hissing, "You will understand in time."
As his thoughts centered on his shara, his shara's must have centered on him, for the man raised his head from his book and looked up directly to where the boy was leaning against the rail. He arched an eyebrow and crooked his finger. It was a direct summons, one the boy knew better than to disobey. He circled around to the narrow staircase and scrambled down, Vritra, his pet snake, slithering after him.
"Shara?" he hissed questioningly when he was only a few feet away.
"Revelin," Shara replied, "What do you wish to ask me?"
Revelin did not wonder how his shara had known he wanted to ask him something. Even though he had just turned three, Revelin knew his shara was smarter than other sharas. He always seemed to know what Revelin was thinking. It was almost as if he was reading his mind.
"I was going to ask if we could go to the souk today," Revelin hissed back. "But then I saw that you were angry."
His shara considered him for a moment. "And why," he asked suddenly in English, "do you wish to go to the souk?"
Revelin resisted the urge to bite his lip. His shara did not like it when he bit his lip. But Revelin did not try to think of some intelligent excuse for his request, because his shara would know if he was being dishonest. Instead he said, "I just wanted to get outside the riad."
It was inadvertently a confession of unhappiness, but his shara did not get upset. Instead, he tilted his head to the side, considering Revelin with eyes that occasionally slit like those of a cat. He asked, gravely, "Are you bored here?"
Revelin resisted the urge to shift uncomfortably on his feet. His shara did not like it when he did that either. Revelin thought about what to say. He did not want to sound ungrateful, for his shara was always telling him to be grateful for what he had, but the truth won out. "Yes," he reluctantly confessed.
Rather than berate him for being ungrateful, though, his shara's lips turned up at the side. "I see. Very well. Then perhaps we ought to begin your education."
At first the words didn't register, but when they did, Revelin's stomach soared. "Really?" he squealed, jumping a little. He immediately calmed himself when he saw his shara frown. Still, he couldn't stop his eyes from shining as he asked again, "Really?"
His shara inclined his head. "Really. But tomorrow." He set his book down on the table and unfolded himself from a chair, soaring to his impressive height. Revelin skittered with excitement. His shara was going to begin teaching him! Revelin had been looking forward to it ever since he had learned what education was. Revelin could get so awfully bored.
"What are you doing now?" Revelin asked curiously, seeing the way his shara was grabbing his cloak.
"Getting ready to go to the souk," his shara answered, raising an eyebrow. "Isn't that what you wanted to do today?"
Revelin let out another little squeal, which made his shara frown, and ran off to his room to find his shoes.
AAAA—Page Break—AAAA
Voldemort had decided to raise the boy in Morocco for a variety of reasons, all of them related to the fact that Morocco provided complete anonymity.
In the hours after the boy's birth, when his mother's blood still coated the sheets, Voldemort had stared down at the child and pondered his future. It had been more than obvious to Voldemort that the boy couldn't be entrusted to his Death Eaters. Any Death Eater with cunning and ambition would realize immediately what sort of threat Voldemort's offspring posed to their own position. They would try, inevitably, to engineer his death in a way they suspected Voldemort wouldn't suspect, though of course he would…And any Death Eater who didn't follow that course of action was either too stupid to realize what a threat the child was or too weak to try to assassinate him. Either way, they were unworthy of raising Voldemort's offspring. No, the boy, since he was still just a boy, would have to be protected—from Voldemort's Death Eaters, from the Ministry of Magic, and from the Order of the Phoenix. And the best way for that to occur was for not a single living soul to suspect who exactly the boy was.
That was easier said than done, of course, when the boy was a Parselmouth. Voldemort's daughter had been lucky to remain unaware of her ability, but the same would not be said of the boy, not with Voldemort as his guardian. And Voldemort could recall the many times in his childhood when he had slipped up and spoken to a snake in the presence of others. Fortunately, it had been in front of muggles, and the muggles hadn't understood the significance of speaking to snakes. The same could not be said for a large portion of the Wizarding world. In the West, as had been the case with his mother, if Revelin said a word in Parseltongue in front of another, his identity would immediately be known. Since under no circumstances would Voldemort allow the child to be raised among muggles, that meant the child would have to be raised in a community where Voldemort did not have a presence, and where his abilities were largely unknown. That had effectively eliminated every country in Europe, most of North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, as well as China, Japan, and South Korea.
As soon as Voldemort had concluded that he would have to raise the boy outside his places of interest, he began searching for places that were, effectively, so random and so insignificant to Voldemort, that should Albus Dumbledore ever suspect Voldemort of hiding relatives, he would never seek them out there. Over the course of several days, Voldemort devised a list of seven possible cities: Marrakech, Morocco; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Antananarivo, Madagascar; Victoria, Seychelles; Phuket, Thailand; Lima, Peru; and Salvador, Brazil. He then narrowed it down to those cities with old European populations—in other words, cities that had a significant portion of European people, so that a European child wouldn't be unusual, but whose inherent European populations had been so long secluded from Europe that they still knew little of current European events. That had left Salvador, Victoria, Lima, and Marrakech.
Of those, he chose Marrakech because of two unique characteristics. The first was that snakes played a larger part of Moroccan culture than other cultures. In Marrakech, owls, cats, and rats, the usual Wizarding pets, were common, of course, but Marrakech was unique in that another pet was quite common: snakes. This prevalence of snakes was further protection for Revelin, another way for the boy to blend in. A boy with a pet snake wouldn't be that unusual here.
The second reason Voldemort chose Marrakech was the riad; that is, the prevalent housing type, found only in Morocco. Apparently, according to the real estate agent, the riad house style had been picked up from the muggles—which always filled Voldemort with great distaste—whose religion required that women be kept in seclusion. Thus riads were the ultimate in privacy. Like most dwellings in Europe, all riads were connected, like apartments and townhouses, but they didn't have a single exterior window. The only outward-facing aperture in the riad was the front door. Instead, to let in light, each riad was built around an interior courtyard, which was completely open air, generally with a pool or garden in it. Each room was accessible via the courtyard or the balcony overlooking it on the upper levels. The extra privacy this had afforded had pleased Voldemort immensely, so much so over the years that he had spent more time in the riad than he had initially anticipated. This fact made him rather grateful that he had decided to splurge on the place.
Initially, Voldemort had thought to get just a small, simple house for the boy—it would better help the child blend in—but circumstances had propelled him to make a larger purchase. For one, he had plenty of money. Though Voldemort himself had only ever been employed once—that brief stint at Borgin and Burkes—he had, over the decades, acquired a small fortune. It was because of his Death Eaters, of course, the particularly stupid ones. Sometimes his Death Eaters gave him gifts in an attempt to ingratiate themselves. Voldemort had little desire for material possessions, but he tolerated the gift-giving because it occasionally produced something useful, like a rare tome on dark magic or a powerful magical artifact. But one time, during the early years, a Death Eater had brought him a magical lyre. Of course, it was a wonderfully rare and expensive lyre, worth almost half a million galleons, but a lyre nevertheless. Voldemort had asked the idiotic, bumbling Death Eater, scathingly, what exactly he expected Voldemort to play. He had then continued on to comment, sarcastically, that the man would have been better to just give him the value of the lyre in gold. To Voldemort's utter mirth, the terrified little man had proceeded to do so. Voldemort had thought this so hysterical that, instead of killing the man, which is what he had intended to do, he let him live for sheer entertainment value. Over the decades, similar incidents had occurred, with terrified Death Eaters shoving large sums of money at Voldemort in the hopes that he might spare their lives. Apart from the first man, they had all been unsuccessful.
The second reason he had bought such a large, luxurious riad had to do with his identity in Morocco. The minute Voldemort had decided his Death Eaters couldn't be trusted with Revelin, he knew he would have to be completely responsible for the child's upbringing. While this thought would have normally repulsed him, Revelin was special. Revelin was a gift. Destiny had given Revelin to him. Voldemort would be foolish if he didn't make sure Destiny's gift was properly cared for. Thus Voldemort could accept—not necessarily being a father or grandfather to Revelin—but a guardian, a teacher, or, in Parseltongue, a shara, an older male relative whom one ought to respect.
But to the outside world, Voldemort knew he would have to appear to be Revelin's father, since any other relationship would raise eyebrows. This required him to assume an alternate identity and body, since his current form was rather conspicuous. Thus, in the days following Revelin's birth, Voldemort performed an extremely dangerous ritual requiring the sacrifice of one of his followers—it had been a fitting use for the elder Mulciber—that turned him into something similar to a Metamorphagus. Voldemort had then created an alternate form. This second form looked a bit like what Tom Riddle might have looked like in his late thirties, early forties, but not too similar: Voldemort needed to resemble Revelin enough to look like his father but not resemble Tom Riddle so much that someone might get suspicious. He had then assumed the name Cadmus Ellwood, after his illustrious ancestor Cadmus Peverell, and had spun the story of being an independent Curse-Breaker, whose wife had died tragically and who had decided to raise in his son in Morocco to be close to work and far from the war going on in Europe. And since Voldemort was not good at faking stupidity nor did he desire to do so, Cadmus Ellwood would obviously be highly intelligent, which would ensure that his neighbors would expect him to be very successful, and successful Curse-Breakers made a lot of money. Hence the luxurious riad.
The transition to Marrakech had proved an interesting and surprisingly welcome change of scenery. It had been a simple enough transition at the time, considering the riad had come fully furnished. All Voldemort had to do was send one of his house-elves out for nursery items to make the place suitable for Revelin. And since the house-elves took care of Revelin's day to day needs, Voldemort rarely saw the child in the first few months, only occasionally checking in on him. He warded the child's nursery so he never had to hear the boy crying, so the rest of the house was generally very quiet and peaceful. The privacy the riad afforded meant Voldemort could use the rest of the house for a variety of Dark purposes without anyone suspecting anything, and the distance from his Death Eaters had been welcome. Lucius Malfoy seemed particularly happy to see Voldemort leave his manor, although of course Voldemort still used it for meeting with his Death Eaters—though, since he generally only did that in the evenings, he spent many daylight hours in Morocco.
Of course, it wasn't as though he spent all his free time in Morocco. Like before Revelin, Voldemort spent a good portion of his day doing magical research, which often required him to travel to obscure places across the globe. Indeed, between planning, doing research, meeting with his Death Eaters, and tracking the movements of his enemies, Voldemort generally only ended up spending one or two hours a day in the riad doing nonessential functions—that is, not eating or sleeping. Voldemort had very little free time, which was only to be expected considering he was taking over the world.
His schedule was about to undergo a drastic change, though, with the beginning of Revelin's education. Though the boy was barely three, Voldemort knew he was ready for this step. Voldemort had looked into the child's mind, had seen it develop over the years, knew it better than anyone else's mind. When he had been born, Revelin's mind had been formless, fluidic, full of mostly base emotions but marked by flashes of curiosity. Voldemort had watched as it grew, took form, and compartmentalized. At 3 months the boy had uttered his first word. It was in Parseltongue, since the child's throat and mouth muscles hadn't developed enough for the use of English, and Voldemort had seen in his mind that the boy didn't truly comprehend what he was saying; rather, he was merely repeating what he had often heard. But it wasn't much longer till the boy spoke and understood, at 6 months. Thus that first year Voldemort had conversed with the child in only Parseltongue, though their conversation was limited as Revelin's understanding and awareness of the wider world was limited. It fascinated Voldemort, though, studying the boy as he developed. He had watched as awareness of the world filtered in, as the child connected points A and B to a sudden revelation. This was particularly amusing when he saw, as if a sudden switch had been flipped in the boy's brain, Revelin realize the movement he was capable of versus what Voldemort and the house elves were capable of, and his resulting frustration at being able to do little more than wriggle. The frustration hadn't lasted long: the child had apparently focused all of his concentration on learning how to move, so by nine months the boy could toddle around. It was an extraordinary developmental milestone for a child, but everything about the boy's development had been extraordinary.
At one, the boy started picking up Arabic, and later, English. Now he was three, and fluent in all three languages, enough that his education could begin in earnest, and he was intelligent and curious enough that he had already thoroughly explored and tinkered with the various objects in the rooms he was allowed to go in, and now he was beginning to get bored. Voldemort had noticed it a few weeks ago, when Revelin had begun asking more and more often to go to the nearby souk. The boy enjoyed the intellectual stimulation the souk provided, since Voldemort, when they went, often told him the history of the buildings or the uses and histories of the various objects sold in the market. Revelin absorbed this information like a sponge, often asking an endless array of questions about everything, so much so that sometimes they ended up spending long hours among the stalls.
When Voldemort wasn't in the mood to tell Revelin various stories, the boy entertained himself in other ways, namely by trying to speak with vendors, who were all charmed by the tiny, intelligent child. Voldemort had no problem with this, one, because it was good for Revelin to have practice charming people, and two, because Revelin had begun to pick up words and phrases in other languages, namely Spanish and French—which Voldemort of course knew—and several of the Berber languages of the indigenous Moroccan population, which Voldemort didn't—Tamazight, Tachelhit, and Tarifit.
There had been another way the child had tried to entertain himself, and this one had concerned Voldemort. Namely, Revelin had attempted for a while to interact with other children his age. Voldemort hadn't wanted Revelin forming any silly attachments, but he had decided to let the boy be. He knew Revelin would discover on his own just how unworthy other children were of being his friends. And indeed Revelin had discovered this, since, for a child as intelligent as Revelin, other children his age were plain dumb. "Some," Revelin had exclaimed in shock, in his perfect, grammatically-correct English, "can't even form full sentences!" And those children who were intelligent enough to not be idiots in comparison to Revelin were much too old to play with a toddler. Revelin had stopped trying to wonder off and play with other children three weeks ago.
Indeed, thought Voldemort smugly, picking up Revelin and setting him on his hip. He locked the door to the riad behind him and strode bristly towards the bustling souk. It is unlikely that Revelin will ever seek out friendship again, now that he understands just how special he is. He is learning his place in the world. Voldemort was pleased.