Chapter 5:
Scene of the Crime - Part 2
Canterbury England, 1938:
Tom Riddle sat on a salt-eroded bench tossing pebbles over the cliff's edge. Watching them plummet into the raging ocean below served as a calming exercise for him.
Their yearly field trip to Canterbury had finally lost all luster after five years of repeatedly exploring the same cathedrals, museums and overpriced shops that none of his foster siblings could hope to afford sweets from, let alone Tom himself. Even the enthusiasm of the newly minted six-year-olds going on their first ever outing couldn't break Tom out of his malaise.
That being said, he had yet to tire of the majesty of nature on display here at the white cliffs. They always spent their final day of the "Anonymous Donor" funded trip walking the trail overlooking an endless blue horizon. This year the wind was calm and, finally being eleven years old, he was granted the privilege to walk unsupervised. Unfortunately, the cost of this privilege was fast becoming too steep.
"I'm cold. Can we go back now?"
Tom turned to look at Amy and Dennis. Both were mere months younger than him, but due to happenstance of birth date he was the one tasked with babysitting them.
"It's August and the breeze is lovely; HOW can you be cold!?" Amy retorted on Tom's behalf, earning her a rare and genuine smile of gratitude from the older boy.
Indeed, it was. After a two-hour hike along the grassy trail, he had worked up a sweat, and the breeze was doing wonders to cool him off. Dennis didn't need a rest break. He clearly had energy to spare and his excuse of being cold was an obvious attempt at goading Tom into continuing their jaunt. If only by sheer annoyance. He wasn't going to fall for it.
"If you want to warm yourself up you could always just do jumping jacks." Tom supplied with a less sincere smirk than before.
"Yeah. Get you all brawny and handsome for when you're old enough to ship off to Germany and kill socialists." Amy jeered.
Dennis greened a bit at Amy's chide. The mousy blonde went from giddy and twitchy to nervous and fumbling in the blink of an eye.
"I don't think the war will still be going on in another eight years. It can't be." Dennis offered hopefully.
The younger boy's downcast gaze and fidgeting fingers told Tom that he very much believed in the possibility of reaching adulthood to enter a world still at war. It was a vision of the future Tom shared in his heart of hearts, but one that he would not allow to ruin this otherwise perfect day for them.
"Could be." Tom admitted honestly "But I don't think you have to worry about recruiters knocking down your door."
Dennis took a moment to catch his meaning but perked up when he did.
"What are you trying to say? That I'm not fit enough to be a soldier?"
Amy stepped up to the plate, as she was wont to do every spare afternoon in the back-alley sandlot beside Wool's Orphanage and took over teasing their especially scrawny friend.
"Please! Mr. Butthemilkjugissoheavy, how are you gonna carry a rifle or drag around mewmitions."
"It's munitions, you dork!" Dennis objected. "And who's to say I plan to enlist in a combat role? Maybe I'd be a medic."
"Right. You, a medic. You went crying to Tom when I cut myself on the fence sheet. How are you going to help with gunshot wounds when you can't bear the sight of blood, hmm?"
Tom remembered that incident. The back fence of the orphanage opened to a back alley the older orphans had converted to their best approximation of a sandlot. Being such cheapskates, the administrators saw fit to cover the gap with flimsy sheet metal instead of repairing it, and Amy sliced the back of her hand from finger to wrist on it. He had almost freaked out as badly as Dennis at the sight of her injury. It was only with practiced nonchalance that he had kept his cool. That and Amy's odd obliviousness to the injury.
"Hey! The adults freaked out even harder when they saw it. I'd say I handled that pretty well. Imagine how much better I'll be when I'm bigger." Dennis countered.
That was fair.
"You'll be an even bigger baby! That or working at the home with those other bullies." Amy accused.
That was decidedly unfair.
"Nuh-uh! If any of us were to wind up working there it'd be you."
Before Tom knew what was happening Dennis gave Amy a solid push. It wasn't hard enough to push her over, but that didn't change the fact that they were standing near the edge of a cliff with a sheer drop to a craggy ocean shore. Tom wasn't a cook, but if we were to write a recipe book this situation would be a decent ingredients reference for a good ol disaster.
"No, you!" Amy roared as she shoved Dennis back.
Tom only now recovered from the sudden terror that gripped him when Dennis gave the first shove. He shook off the freezing panic and rose to his feet, a dressing down on the tip of his tongue. He was too late. Amy slipped on the loose sand as she pushed back and slid two whole meters to the cliff edge.
Dennis, in a moment of stunning bravery, leapt forward to grab her, landing prone on his stomach and grasping her wrists as she slid over the edge. Little Dennis had neither the strength to lift her up nor the weight to keep her anchored from going over, thus he began sliding over with her. Tom, feeling like the last monkey in a barrel forming this chain, tried to grab hold of Dennis' ankles as the pair went over the edge and, missing, leapt over with them in his own stupidly brave attempt at a rescue. On the bright side, he did manage to grab both of them now that they were falling.
They were screaming now, all three of them, and for once Tom felt not a shred of shame at letting his fear and panic show.
None of them could rationalize what happened next, despite their most creative efforts. Soon they felt the air close in on them, squeezing them like a giant human hand made of rubber, and the next thing they knew they had landed on a rock outcropping below. Unharmed.
The Present:
Granger scampered away on all fours, crushing the tiny pieces of fish and rodent bones and flinging them every which way in her rush.
"Oh, get over it. You're twelve!" Tom yelled at the suddenly indignant bookworm.
She was having none of it.
"You grabbed my chest!" Hermione complained... again.
It was taking all of his self-control not to give her a good smack to the back of her head.
"And I grabbed Colin's, and yet I don't hear him crying about it." Tom told the girl.
She had an impressive scowl.
"He's a boy!" She hissed.
For his part, the camera-wed Gryffindor was showing a great deal of intelligence and backing away from the irate beaver.
"And in regard to your chest, so are you." Tom said with his most demeaning smile.
Her horrified gasp at the insult was overshadowed by the twins crashing into the pool of bones as a pile of tangled limbs. It was a position Tom assumed they found themselves in regularly, if their practiced and organized procedure for untangling themselves was an indication.
"Fred! George!"
The pair of redheads looked up from their creative rendition of 'Head, shoulders knees and toes" and turned serious in an instant at the sight of Hermione in a full-blown panic.
"He groped me!"
They looked from the accusing finger to Tom and burst into simultaneous laughter. Tom scoured the memories he'd inherited from Harry, but even he had never seen the bookworm pout so adorably.
"Well Fred, I say we know our mystery man's preference." Said George.
"Quite. Clearly he is a fan of the breast." Said Fred.
"A boob man, through and through." They chorused.
In all honesty, Tom wasn't what the twins called, a boob man. Sure, he'd fondled a nice pair of mammaries or two during his school career, but he had other preferences in women. After all, Minerva had always been rather thin and flat, but oh boy did she look good in that lingerie he bought her. Frilly stockings and silk pantaloons with the highest of heels to make her entire lower half look even tighter. His memory of that first time she'd given him a show was the first thing to successfully power his patronus. Later, on the day of her graduation, he gained an even happier memory to use from her.
Sadly, he couldn't use either of those memories anymore. They were tainted by the image of what Minnie looked like now. And wasn't that nightmare fuel?
In the meantime, Justin and Ron had seen fit to join them in the animal graveyard and Hermione, skipping Justin as a lost cause, clung to Ron and complained again that Tom had grabbed her by the chest.
"Yeah I know, I was there. Remember?" Ron answered obliviously.
"What, what!?" She demanded.
"When he grabbed you and Creevey and jumped there. I saw him do it. What of it?" Ron asked.
She sputtered for a few seconds, motioning towards her chest, Tom and Ron. Eventually the youngest (remaining) Weasley caught on and rolled his eyes.
"Grow up, will you!" He all but yelled at his friend. "We have bigger things to worry about than your misplaced sense of propriety."
And with that, she was sufficiently mortified to calm down and let them continue their journey. That, or she was just surprised to hear Ron use such a big word as 'propriety'.
From there Ron led the group further into the depths of the Hogwarts basement and to the wall of stone, compliments of Gilderoy Lockheart. It was up to Justin and the twins to use a combination of levitation spells and stone melting charms to transfigure an opening. It was rather impressive, forming a large archway with smoothed edges.
This all served to make Tom yearn more strongly for a wand but didn't feel like he deserved one at the moment.
A skip and a hop later had them at the serpent-decorated vault door to the chamber proper.
"Open up."
Ronald's words came out sounding like English to Tom, but the vault door opened at his command all the same.
"First try!" Fred whooped.
"Our little Ronnie will make it to the rank of dark lord by Summer's end, you mark my words."
Tom's entourage greatly resembled a pack of flamingos as they explored the chamber of secrets. Bunched together, inching forward and heads swerving each way. They "ooh'd" and "aww'd" at every statue. Salazar had personalyl sculpted each one based on a different type of snake, but the cobra was the most impressive.
Fred and George tested the water around the statues and the grime along the rocky walls for anything dark or poisonous. Beyond being bodies of still water left to rot with mold and algae they could find nothing dangerous. The corpse of Tom's deceased friend was also hugely impressive to them.
"A few air-freshening and water-purifying setups and we could turn this place into a right old water park." Fred concluded.
"Don't you think the giant dead Basilisk in the middle of the cavern would be a bit of a sore point for customers?" Justin asked as he toed said Basilisk corpse.
Tom felt his skin prickle in anger at the treatment of his first, and only friend. Then he realized his first and only friend was a murderous thousand-year-old serpent and swore to never share that depressing fact.
"Nonsense!" George exclaimed. "Once we sell off all of the useful bits, we can string up the skeleton to the ceiling as a decorational piece. Like the wyvern in defense class."
Deep breaths Tom. Deep breaths.
"I can do you one better. Carve a lion statue into the wall above the entrance and put the corpse in its mouth." Said Ron.
"Throw a springboard on top of Salazar's fat, balding head and the pool under his mouth would be the main attraction." Said Creevey.
"Ooh! I like that idea. What say you, Minerva?"
They all froze in place at the sound of the new, wispy voice.
"Quite tempting, headmaster. While I'm sure I am more than up to the taste of making these fantasies come true, I would be more interested in adding some glisseo charms to the pipe entrance and making it into a water slide." Minnie answered Dumbledore.
A tirade of choice expletives was exchanged between the students, Tom very much included, with little care for loss of house points.
The headmaster and the woman who, apparently, became deputy headmistress in recent years smiled at their expense. The sallow, greasy-haired man at their back seemed less amused. Much more disheveled. And like he was in desperate need of a shave.
Dumbledore clapped once.
"Now now, you had a lovely adventure, but you all really must return to your treatment. It doesn't take an eye as trained as mine to see you all buckling under the pain in your joints." The headmaster said smilingly.
It was true, they winced with every movement. Those still petrified bits of meat and bone in their bodies still causing damage. His compatriots groaned in objection, all the while their bodies betrayed them, and they trudged along to the entrance all the same.
"Wait!" Even Tom was surprised by the objection coming from his mouth.
All eyes turned to him.
"Please, sir, they came here looking for answers. Looking for closure. Let them get their fill of the thing that almost killed them. Let them do their investigating. Let them find closure for... Those two they lost. Let them cope."
Dumbledore schooled his features to one of calm consideration, the one only he could pull off. As he glanced between Tom and his six companions. Nobody made a sound, until.
"Very well. You may stay, and under our supervision, conduct your investigation." Dumbledore relented. "Do not get within two meters of the mouth."
The others whooped and got to work. Tom absent-mindedly noted the spells Fred and George took to casting as the greasy-haired man approached him. Hair, skin and blood detection charms. Spells used by crime scene investigators. Unsurprisingly, they got results near the large ink stand near the...
"Here!" The man, Snape, shoved a vial of something into Tom's hands.
It was a bile restoring potion. The last of his regimen until he was good as new. He made to thank the man only to realize that the potions master was uncomfortably close. Close enough to get a really good look at.
He looked like shit. Utter shit. His eyes were sunken in the way sleep deprivation does to a man. It couldn't have been less than four days since he'd last shaved by the state of his face and his eyes were bloodshot. The smell of alcohol and unwashedness came off of him in waves.
He barely noticed that Snape was studying his own face, gazing deeply into his eyes as if he might find something there. Tom could even see the moment Snape realized he wasn't going to find whatever he was looking for and, for a split second, he looked on the verge of tears.
Tom blinked and the cold exterior of the potions teacher he had so many memories of hating was back. A sneer and billowing of cloak later and Snape stormed away.
What a strange man. Tom took his potion and waited for the other students to finish here, then returned to his house arrest.
Want your Story Written?
I take commissions now! You can pay me to write your fanfiction or original works. My prices are as follows.
$25 per 1000 words of fanfiction, with some wiggle room. I don't pad my work. You also get to video chat with me as I type the first chapter.
$25 per 500 words for original works, so anything that is not fanfiction. I also charge $25 per 500 words for smut or fetish materials.
Prices subject to change in the future. Check with me.
Become a Patron:
NonsensicalRants
You can also still become a patron for ONE DOLLAR to get access to future chapters 2 weeks early and vote on which stories I update next.
