The first time I saw Tom Riddle I wasn't immediately smitten with him. I wasn't like those stupid girls in fairytales who think the first handsome boy they meet is "the one". I was just eleven years old. I didn't really think about boys that way yet.

I'll admit, I thought he was quite handsome, but I was trying to train myself for later to think of boys as just friends. I figured once the hormones started kicking in, I wouldn't want to be blushing around every male I met. So as my orphanage kids mingled with the other orphanage kids, I shook his hand like a shook everyone else's, trying to act indifferent to everything.

But one thing I did to everybody was send a little shock up everyone's hand to see if they noticed. It wasn't that bad of magic, and since I hadn't gone to Hogwarts yet, it was perfectly legal. I had good reason, too. Forever I'd been trying to find someone else like me. Sooner or later, I didn't keep track of exactly when, I figured out that if you send a shock up someone's hand you can figure out whether or not someone has magic. If they felt the shock, they were a wizard or a witch depending on the gender. If not, they were a Muggle.

I went through a line of about fifty kids. After shaking hands with the first thirty or so, I began to get bored with not finding anyone who noticed when I shocked them. The only thing that kept driving me on to keep shaking and shocking was the hope that at least one of these kids still in line to shake hands with me was like me. I had found someone before, but she was an adult, and no fun to talk to.

I kept shaking hands and shocking and no one had noticed yet. There were only three people left in line. My spirits were starting to feel low. There wasn't much of a chance I'd find someone else, but I decided to keep shocking. I'd hate to miss something.

I shook the second-to-last kid's hand and sent a shock into him. He opened his mouth as if he had been hurt and quickly withdrew his hand from mine. While he gave me a glare, I was barely containing my excitement. It seemed I found another. I quickly shook the last-kid-in-line's hand and I didn't even bother to send up a shock.

I'd have to apologize for shocking him, of course, but obviously he would forgive me once he found out I was like him. How nice it would be to talk to someone of the pros and cons of having magic!

The lady from the other orphanage, her name was Mrs. Call or something like that, told us to play games with each other for a while so she and Mrs. Nelson, the lady from my orphanage, could rest for the day. I chose to play with a group of kids that were trying to figure out the rules of Monopoly, a Muggle game about Muggle money.

It wasn't too interesting. After a few minutes, I got bored and sat on the same couch the wizard was sitting on, but we were a few cushions away so it didn't seem awkward, or at least to me it didn't. I watched all the different kids play. Some chose to mix with others not from their orphanage, but most stayed with people they knew.

"Why did you shock me?"

It was the first time I heard him talk, and for a moment I was a bit surprised he was actually communicating with me. I was about to ask if he was talking to me when I remembered I had shocked him not five minutes ago. I turned to him and asked him a simple question I hoped wasn't offensive.

"What blood status are you?"

"Excuse me?" he said a tad scathingly. Uh-oh. He was probably a Muggle-born, or as Dad always called them, Mud-bloods. But Mom would always yell at him after he said that word and she would tell me never to repeat it. So I always referred to them as Muggle-borns.

I repeated the question, trying to be gentler and less offensive. "What blood status are you? If you don't mind me asking."

He narrowed his eyes and for a second I was sure he was going to blow me off and label me forever as a crazy person, but he answered. "AB Negative. I think. Why do you want to know?" He countered with a question of his own.

I sighed. That wasn't quite the answer I was looking for. "You really don't know what you are, do you?" That was the wrong choice of words.

"Are you saying you know what I am?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but closed it again. I wanted to tell him so badly that he was a wizard and that I was witch and we had magic, but then he would really think I was a crazy person. So I just nodded.

"What am I?" he seemed to get sweeter, trying to coax an answer out of me, but I had to keep it mysterious, so I just told him:

"It's not my job to tell you." And then I skipped off to my room, because his orphanage was visiting mine. I went up the stairs and was careful to tiptoe past Mrs. Nelson's office, because if she heard me upstairs I would be sent straight back down.

I closed my door carefully and listened for just a moment to find out if anyone had heard me. The noise from downstairs stayed consistent with the silence from up here, so I dug under my bed to find a cardboard box with all of my toys in it. They weren't children's toys such as dolls and card games, but they were metal figurines of all sorts of magical creatures. I had been collecting them for quite a while and I had many.

I picked up from where I left off last time with all three groups of people searching for The Lost Castle of Time. Before I was interrupted, I had just gotten to where things seemed dire and the villains were losing because everyone thought the lead villain had killed the lead Hero, but they didn't know that the hero was only pretending to be dead and he would pop up and smite his enemies.

"What are you doing?" said I voice from behind. I gave a slight jerk.

"What are you doing?" I countered at the wizard peering over my shoulder.

"I asked you first."

"And I asked you second."

"Are you playing with toys?" he sneered. I blushed.

"Exactly how long have you been here?" I snapped.

He shrugged as if just watching me for who knows how long was unimportant. "Since that one," he pointed at the head of the villains, "killed that one." He pointed to the leader of the heroes.

"Why are you here?"

"There was nothing else to do so I followed you up. What is that one?" he pointed to the head of the villains again.

"He's the Grim Reaper, but I made him head of the villains because he's evil?"

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why is he evil?"

"You ask an awful lot of questions."

"I'm curious. Why is he evil?" he repeated.

I shrugged. "Because he is. He probably had a scarred childhood or something like that which lead up to him being evil. I don't know. I'll probably have to think about it."

Mrs. Call or something or other and Mrs. Nelson's voices were getting louder. I quickly put the figurines back in the box and shoved under my bed. I jumped to my feet and opened the door which wizard-boy actually had the courtesy to close after entering.

"Where are you going?"

"Well, unless you want an earful, I'm going downstairs with you."

He nodded and got to his feet as well. He leisurely walked to the door. I rolled my eyes. "While you take your own sweet time, I'll be downstairs." I pulled open the door and ran as fast as one could on their tiptoes past Mrs. Nelson's office and down the stairs. Wizard-boy followed almost closely behind and we both sat on either end of the couch before Mrs. What's-her-name and Mrs. Nelson came downstairs.

"Well, it's to go," said Mrs. Nelson. No one really protested when the kids from the other orphanage lined up to leave. I tried to catch wizard-boy's attention by waving to him, hoping that I could get his name, but he ignored me. Not content, I frowned.

They left, and since it was getting dark, we had to get ready for bed. The boys had the downstairs and the girls had the upstairs, but that didn't making living arrangements any easier. Every gender had their own bathroom, and there was only two for both genders, not counting the one right of Mrs. Nelson's room.

It wasn't terrible, though. There were multiple sinks and mirrors for everyone to use while brushing their teeth at night and doing their hair in the morning. But every time I went to do something like that, there was always at least one girl snickering at my thin lips or my pasty-pale skin or round eyes that made my face seem so childish.

But I lived through the night, and after brushing my teeth and slipping out of the day clothes in my room, I slipped on my flannel nightgown and I pulled my black curls into a ponytail with a green scrunchie. I crawled into bed and quickly fell asleep under the warm covers, but I was wondering if I'd ever see the wizard again to at least learn his name. I shrugged it off and told myself of course I would as I slipped under the grips of sleep.

It wasn't until the next morning when I pulled out the mini figurines to play with that I realized the Grim Reaper was no longer there.

I hope everyone likes this story. I'm hoping to make this a trilogy. Press that review and tell me if you think I should, or if it should be a stand-alone! What are you waiting for? Press that button! You know you want to…