Chapter 4 - Memories
"Dad, There's something I don't get."
"Oh?"
"Dumbledore... I heard that Dumbledore was the one that recruited you to Hogwarts."
"He wasn't lying."
"But... but he didn't. Tom Riddle didn't even exist before you went to Hogwarts."
"That doesn't mean he's lying."
Seeing the confused look on his son's face, William smiled. "Dumbledore believes he met Tom Riddle when he was 10 years old."
"You... how did you do that?!"
William smiled. "Tell you what – I want to show you something before I try to answer that." He waved his wand and a soft scraping sound began echoing from the other end of the house. His son looked confused as to what was going on, until the door was pushed open revealing the source of the noise: a pensieve that William had summoned from his own bedroom. The four legs of the vanity it rested on were lightly rustling along the wooden floor until the basin was right next to William Jr.'s bed. "You know what a pensieve is, right?"
"Yeah. The Tillens' neighbor has one. I didn't know you did, too."
"I don't use it very often," William replied shrugging. He pulled a wisp of silver thought from his temple, gently flicking it into the basin with a flourish. "I'd like you to take a look at a memory from my past."
William Jr. frowned but did as his father asked. It was a bit awkward, trying to crane his head over the edge of the basin from his bed, but after a several seconds managed to find a good position. And... if he was expecting something once he entered the memory, it certainly wasn't this.
They were in a lagoon, standing on a wooden dock stretching over azure waters. In front of them, 20 feet out into the water, was a semi-circle of life-jacket wearing tourists watching a man in a wetsuit – a man who was helping a five year old boy put his hand around a dolphin. William Sr. was easily recognizable as one of the swimmers, grinning at the dolphin-handler and the young boy in the center.
"That's... that's me?"
The memory faded out, with father and son once again looking
"Do you remember it? Think clearly... do you remember what you ate that day?"
"... no..."
"It was your fifth birthday. Your mom wanted to do something out of the ordinary, something unusual."
"I... I remember it being sunny but too warm... I think."
"Yes, it was sunny all that weekend."
A half-minute went by, the son struggling to piece together what happened over two years ago. "Yeah... it was sunny, and... was there a blue cake?"
"That's right – a cake with blue frosting. I think it was white underneath."
"I think I remember," his son said, starting to smile a bit. "I think the dolphin kind of scared me at first."
"Just for a minute," William said soothingly. "After a few minutes, you two were best friends. Tell you what: think about the memory as cleanly as you can, make it as crystal-clear in your mind as you possibly can."
His son frowned and closed his eyes.
"Okay, borrow my wand, touch it to your temple, and flick it towards the basin – and think to yourself 'I want to see this memory' while you do it."
It took three tries, but eventually William Jr. managed to get a tendril of silverish energy deposited in the pensieve.
"Good job, son! Want to take a look?"
The pair ventured into the pensive once again. It looked very similar to the first time, but William picked up on some changes. The Tillans were back on the beach on the edge of the docks. They were sitting around a wooden table, upon which was a large blue cake and several silver-wrapped presents beneath the bench.
A minute later, they both emerged from the memory.
"Very good! You remembered that awfully well!"
"Yeah," William Jr. said, grinning. "I remembered that after I swam with the dolphin, we opened presents with the Tillens. They were sooo jealous that I got to play with the dolphin and they didn't."
William smiled, ducking his head a bit. "There's just one problem."
"What?"
"You've never been to the ocean or the beach."
"What? Yes I have!"
"It never happened."
"I... I don't understand. If I've never been to the beach, how do I remember the Tillens, the presents, how they were jealous of the dolphin and all of that!"
"Because you made it up," William said – and then seeing the angry interruption coming from his son, quickly added, "Well, your brain made it up."
"My brain did not just make up that memory."
"Why not? It happens all the time. You remember how your mom and I could never agree on what happened when we first met? Both of us remember how we met... but we both have different memories of it."
"You..." William Jr. seemed to be angry and speechless. "You lied to me."
William sighed. "I didn't want to. It's just.. unless you saw that, you'd never believe the next part of the story."
"I still think you're playing some sort of joke on me. I remember the dolphin like it was yesterday."
"Memories are like... little shards of thought. Your mind likes misplacing them, misremembering them... and it even can make up its own shards. All it took was showing you a... a picture that your brain believed was true, and it started churing. It took slivers of things it could remember – that it was sunny, that you had a blue cake... but the fragments it couldn't remember it just completely made up."
His son looked unconvinced.
William mentally chided himself. Okay, maybe he shouldn't have given the demonstration to his son – it wasn't exactly something that instilled a lot of trust afterward; there was probably a different way of handling it that wouldn't leave his son incredulous after the next bit of story. Still, it was something that's hard for people to come to grips with: that memories were the most malleable thing in the world. The brain loved shifting and churning them, and "recalling" them with a clarity that hid how badly constructed they were in the first place. You want to know how shaky memories are? Ask a muggle psychologist or a muggle magician. Want to hear a bunch of idiotic falsities about them? Ask a wizard.
William blamed Pensieves. They made the user think what they were seeing was what actually happened; in reality, about 99% of what a pensieve showed was made up on the fly by the wizard's brain at the moment they were seeing it - people simply didn't remember all the details of what was going on around them, let alone enough enough to construct a perfect immersing world. Heck, even if memories were somehow absolutely perfect, the human eye itself only captured detail in a small narrow beam exactly where it was looking (peripheral vision was just vague blurring.) No, William knew that Pensieves were closer to dream-worlds, a realm the subconscious constructed around a few key details. There was a good reason why Pensieve memories weren't allowed as evidence at the Wizengamot.
"I'm sorry, son," he said apologetically. "I just needed you to see that trick before you could understand how Dumbledore was fooled into thinking some of the things he does."
His son frowned. "So you showed him a fake memory?"
"No, my arch-nemesis would take a lot more work than that than that. I had to start small..."
William's - or, more accurately, Tom Riddle's third year at Hogwarts was shaping up to be the same smashing success as his second. He was easily at the top of his class. While part of it was deserved (he had a very keen mind, was exceptionally observant, and put more work into his studies than pretty much else) at least a portion wasn't really fair. First, 'Tom' loved schmoozing the professors – sweet talking pretty much every professor but Dumbledore (he wasn't sure if he could bamboozle that man.) And second, Tom had a habit of accentuating his magic ability with illusion. All sorts of abilities were sprinkled into his resume - the occasional wandless spell, the casual supposedly-incredibly-difficult spell.
So far, though, his favorite was Parseltongue.
That had to be the easiest magical ability to fake. "No, really, I speak a language that none of you understand - you just have to trust me that when I hiss for five seconds, I'm really saying something". Poppycock. Complete, Utter Poppycock. Throw in some observation ("The snake says he wants you to fetch your pet mouse..." - not a hard guess if you know he hasn't eaten in a week!) and some simple spells (pretend you're talking to a snake and suddenly nobody bothers watching your pocket for wand movement) and you're good to go to everyone thinking your the second coming of the Holy Snake Whisperer.
And boy, did he sell it. Without really meaning to, within the year half the students were telling lurid stories of Tom Riddle - anything from him being the Heir to Salazar Slytherin to him having a secret lair within the castle called the Chamber of Secrets.
He grinned, thinking he might be on to something. Up until now, Tom Riddle was just going to be a brilliant precocious wizard. Maybe he should think about turning his persona into a sort of upcoming dark lord?
The only obstacle to trying to go that direction was going to be Dumbledore. The man was a legend, an implacable foe of evil and darkness. So if Tom was going to shape up to be Dark-Lord-In-Training, it would no longer simply be Dumbledore being his Arch-Nemesis, but Tom being Dumbledore's. Oh, he didn't think he was going to have to fight Dumbledore - not by a long shot (and William had no delusions that he would last for more than a half second against the elderly professor.) But... well, real pairs of arch-nemeses had a personal backstory. Former colleagues that had a falling out. Brothers that split apart at their parent's death. Or something. And, if he did become Dumbledore's nemesis, it was a sure bet that the old man would dig further into Tom Riddle's (non-existent) past.
But William knew he couldn't just fabricate something. He knew there was no story he could write, nor trick he could employ, that would somehow slip through the man's formidable mind. Dumbledore, sadly enough, would probably see straight through his deceptions.
Which actually bugged William quite a bit. And it finally occurred to him: he needed to violate one of the Illusionists Rules. Specifically, Rule Number 8: Always Be In Control.
Simply put, he couldn't be in control – there was no way he was going to write a memory for his Transfiguration Professor. So… why not take a gamble? Why not let Dumbledore create Tom Riddle's past?
Tom Riddle spent his third year working on just that. He'd give out little tidbits, little tiny nuggets of information – and nothing more. Certainly no intricate or detailed story or memory. One day he'd toss out an offhanded mention to a muggle orphanage in a conversation with a Ravenclaw. A week later he'd tell a small story of being a bully to some other kids with accidental magic. Or the next day, mentioning during Charms class that the Assistant Headmaster taught him a charm before even getting to Hogwarts. Nothing big, nothing obvious, just… clues. Let Dumbledore focus on them, dwell on them. William knew he'd never be able to plant a memory in Dumbledore's mind, so why not just lay some groundwork and let the man build those memories for himself?
And thus began the legend of yet another fictional character: Lord Voldemort. William began the secret story. Tom Riddle was disgusted at himself, his name, his history. The Slytherins couldn't help but sympathize. Imagine: growing up in a muggle orphanage. Poverty and Muggles! What a disgrace for a proper wizard. The old headmaster, they clucked, probably got a kick out of seeing poor Tom Riddle staying in such a squalid environment. Well? No More. No more, Tom Riddle told his classmates. He was dead - Riddle was only the "official" name on school rolls, but from now on, his secret name was Lord Voldemort (William appreciated the irony of his public persona having it's own private persona.)
William had no clue how few or many of those nuggets found their way to Dumbledore, or even how they got there (Rumor mill? Mind reading? Indiscreet comments?) The only thing that convinced William that this would work is that he knew Dumbledore had a Pensieve – which made him one of the silly wizards that thought memories were infallible records of the past. With any luck, the man would build at least one or two memories of interacting with a pre-Hogwarts Tom Riddle.
Author's Note: This chapter might seem a bit unbelievable at first. The scary part is that it's all based on reality. Psychologists have done tests on memory and have basically come to the conclusion that it's basically a creative and confident liar. The pensieve with the dolphins in this story? Psychologists have done that exact test (with photos instead of a penseive, obviously) from a number of different angles; for example, by photoshopping a picture of the subject riding in a hot-air balloon, they were able to foment an extended false memory of the flight which never occurred.
I also wanted to thank Clell for his recommendation and all the people from Caer Azkaban. I was getting a bit disheartened (3 chapters, no reviews a dozen or so people that even read any of it) - so a deep thanks for all your encouragement.