1937
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Hermione Granger turned out to be a bookworm, a description more accurate than mere simile.
She had a single-minded appetite for literature. She was thin-skinned (although every child who hadn't gone through Wool's School of Life Lessons fell under this category) and fragile (a trait which Tom connoted with weakness) and did better in musty, dark spaces than out in direct sunlight. And she burrowed under his skin like a disease, infecting him with her contagious Opinions. She had a stance on everything, didn't hesitate to share them, and to Tom's disgust, made some legitimate points now and again.
In her fortnightly letters, she sent him newspaper clippings with notes written in the margins in tiny text.
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Chamberlain Improves Factory Conditions for Working Women and Youth
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I'm sure you already know that state-sponsored full-time education is only guaranteed until the age of fourteen, and after you turn fifteen I suppose you will be expected to take vocational studies or apprentice in a trade, or in worst cases, be sent to do light labour or other such work in a factory while whoever is in charge calls it "job training" and pays you half wages...
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Tom did know this. Many of the older orphans were out during daylight hours doing odd jobs. He hadn't cared to look into into it; he rarely interacted with them except for the few times when one moved out and left an empty room to scavenge through.
His personal plan was to stay in education until he was forced to leave Wool's. If he kept getting top marks then he'd be sponsored through to eighteen, and perhaps after that, enough recommendations would convince the local borough council to see him through university.
It was with abhorrence that he realised he'd have to be Tom the Good Boy until then.
It was with anger that he realised social mobility for someone of his status was very far from attainable. That even if his father was someone important—it was a long-held wish of Tom's, but he had seen no proof of it so far—his mother surely was not, and that the sin of birth was a permanent stain as far as most were concerned, no matter that Tom hadn't any choice in the matter, nor done anything to deserve it.
And it was with contempt that he realised Hermione Granger knew all of this, didn't care, and felt sorry for him.
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...Might be opportunities available overseas suitable for someone of your ambition. A comfortable position in India or Hong Kong would likely guarantee the native population to recognise you as unique, a rarity, just by virtue of being an Englishman. From the tone of your past letters, I surmise that is something you value. I make no judgement of it, apart from observing that this attitude is not uncommon for Englishmen abroad, and that if you ever do what Lieutenant Pinkerton did to Madame Butterfly, I would have no choice but to geld you.
Mummy would say that I shouldn't know what that word means, but Daddy is a doctor and a scalpel is not so hard to find, nor is an anatomy textbook. Don't worry, I promise that if I make a mistake, I'll get Daddy to put you back together so I can try again.
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There were some things, at least, that were tolerable about her. For one, her sense of humour wasn't limited to jokes about flatulence. (One of the boys at Wool's had recently gotten his hands on a whoopee cushion; the ensuing antics had lasted for three days before Tom had had to put his foot down. He'd confiscated it and publicly disposed of it during supper in the name of the greater good.)
And it amused him that she held onto her Opinions with a tenacity that wasn't matched by her grasp on morality.
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Your commitment to justice is commendable, Hermione, wrote Tom.
But I have my doubts that you would actually be able to carry out such a deed, no matter how much you wish it. I've always believed that you are one to prefer leaving justice to the duly sanctioned authority. In his case, Lieutenant Pinkerton would be charged by a military court for the crime of bigamy. As for me? I would not be in that situation because I would not be so stupid as to get married in the first place, let alone married TWICE.
Any "justice" you deem fit to dispense would be limited by your conscience.
But do go on, impress me with your moxie.
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The months passed in a flurry of envelopes stamped with the face of the freshly-crowned King George. Tom wrote his obligatory two pages every two weeks. He didn't write anything about the orphanage, about the envious glances the other children shot him when he had trade goods to exchange for upper year school textbooks, to upgrade to a silver nib fountain pen. He didn't mention how second-hand glimpses of a world beyond the grimy streets of South London had distracted him from his role as Schoolmaster Tom, causing the starlings that slept under his roof to circle like tiny vultures, until he re-established his place in the pecking order with the death of a rabbit fed on rat poison.
Hermione, as per their original agreement, had made no such promise to write him back, only that she'd send gift parcels for every four letters he sent. But she wrote replies to his letters, on thick cream letterhead paper, her initials embossed on the top. She congratulated him on his excellent marks, sent him a clipping of his name in the paper for ranking top once more. She asked if he was enrolling to the nearby comprehensive or applying to a more prestigious local grammar school once he finished primary.
(He wasn't. There was no money to spare for uniforms, no money to take the trolleybus there and back every day.
Not that he told her that. He could write about his ambitions, his future, distant glory eternal and everlasting. But he said nothing about his present. Wool's was merely ephemeral in the grand view of things, a transitory stage in his growth; in a blink of an eye he would be gone, and it would be forgotten, and he would make everyone forget that this coal-blackened box of concrete was where he'd been born.
He didn't tell her.
She already knew.)
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Dear Tom,
The disdain you feel for humanity is truly unparalleled. Have you ever considered applying your talents to help humanity meet your impossible standards?
Just the other day, I read an interesting essay on the concept of "Zeitgeist"...
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Mrs. Cole stopped giving him wary looks when she passed him his mail, not oblivious to the fact that the envelopes were return addressed to a Miss Granger whose mother signed the bank cheques that put food on the table and gin in the desk drawer.
Tom still hadn't reversed his judgement on Hermione Granger. She was annoyingly persistent, like the people who stood on street corners pushing pamphlets and proselytising about Christ's imminent return or Communist utopias. He didn't like it.
He didn't like her.
She wrote her letters in blue-black ink, each word perfectly formed, the script evenly spaced in neat lines, the envelopes scented. The post office clerks thought Tom was a middleman delivery boy for someone's illicit lady love.
She was the only person his own age who didn't think it was a waste of time to study subjects beyond the school curriculum. One would not be asked to plot a polynomical function when working at a cannery. Stevedores and porters had no need for flawless manners and refined elocution.
She was the only one who prefixed her greetings to him with "Dear".
But—
Hermione was ordinary.
People didn't hurt when she wanted them to, because she couldn't do it and she thought it was wrong. She couldn't refashion the universe with the force of her will.
They had scarcely anything in common; their correspondence was a transcript of debates, each point evaluated and refuted, sentences crowned with sprays of ink splatters when touching on subjects of firm personal investment.
Nevertheless, she couldn't reshape his convictions with the force of her obstinacy.
But she tried anyway.
(They still weren't friends.)
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That December, Hermione invited him to the opera with her family as a special Christmas treat. She brought him a new coat during the now annual St. John's Ladies Society charity visit.
"I've never been to the opera before," said Hermione as she entered the reading room, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. "I was too young, and they run on for hours and hours once you add in the intermission. But my parents are convinced that I have a friend now, and since you don't go to the same school with me, they want to meet the person I spend days writing to."
It's a test, thought Tom. "Do they expect anything of me?"
Recite my times tables? Expound on my favourite Tory candidates? Fetch sticks or bark on command?
"They might ask you a few questions," Hermione confessed. "But you're ten years old; no one's going to sit you down for cigars and brandy and ask you to state your intentions."
"How thrilling," said Tom. "I expect I can remember not to drop my aitches for one night."
"It'll be worthwhile," said Hermione. "They've booked a box for the four of us. Mum and dad meant it to be a treat—not an interrogation. And I knew you wouldn't come if you had to rub shoulders with the peons in the stall seats."
In his letters, Tom had been plenty forthright about the subset of humanity that he didn't believe was worth rehabilitating. She thought he used the word "peons" ironically. They'd argued about it, Tom believing that she was too close-minded and sheltered about the topic: it wasn't like she had to live in a neighbourhood shared with the types of people he despised, the ones who roamed the streets in the dark and spoke in coded English that was never King's English. Rowdy boys, bawdy girls, rattle snafflers and ken cribbers, lurchers, lushes, dossers and ribbers.
Not that the East End of London was a lawless frontier where one would be cut down a metre outside their front step. It had been, he'd read, much worse last century. He was grateful not to have been born then. (As much as he could be grateful for being born; it was difficult for him to comprehend the feeling of gratefulness with relation to his mother, whom he considered useless in every other context.)
"Alright," Tom sighed, sounding resigned to his fate. It wouldn't do for Hermione to think that he actually enjoyed her company. Reading her rambling by post was quite removed from having to appear alert and interested in person. "If your parents are willing to play chaperone and chauffeur, then I'll be your Good Boy for the evening."
A week later—a week before his eleventh birthday—the Grangers picked Tom up from the orphanage gates in their motorcar, and gave him his first taste of grandeur. Of course he'd seen the grand buildings of central London before, toured Whitehall and the West End with a school group where the guide lectured at them about the history of the city and the important people who ran the country, feeding them false hopes that one day they could be there too, despite their lack of public school records and Norman Conquest pedigrees.
The difference was like looking in through the windows, and actually being allowed in. Here was a doorman doffing his cap, there was a velvet rope being pushed aside so he could pass through. In the instant where Tom was blinded by the light of crystal chandeliers reflecting off golden scrollwork panelling the walls and white-skinned marble nymphs set in alcoves, he had an epiphany.
This was the reason why princes wanted to be kings, and kings dreamt of becoming emperors. It was for this that a king would sign the Magna Carta, giving away his powers and offices bit by bit, as long as he kept the crowns and palaces.
This was the physical manifestation of success. Beautiful things, respect from lesser beings, admiration and envy from the aspirational. Tom absorbed it all; he gloated in it, and immersed himself in the feeling. He memorised it, from the parquet floors to the fresco ceilings, and sent them to the corner of his mind that he had labelled 'Motivational Thoughts'.
He found the centrepiece of the evening—Madame Butterfly—to be inferior in retrospect to the awe he'd felt stepping into the theatre's foyer for the first time. The private box was nice, the seats luxuriously cushioned, though rather high up, and the intermission had an attendant serve the adults champagne and the children cherry squash in stemmed glasses. But the opera itself was an overacted melodrama, British actors swaddled in Oriental silks and singing in Italian; he judged it a shallow, absurdist fancy disguised as poignant tragedy.
Hermione and her mother both cried at the end.
On the drive back to Wool's, Hermione asked him, "What did you think of it?"
"It was... interesting," Tom replied diplomatically. Her parents were within earshot, so he was careful to remain the very picture of a polite, respectful Good Boy.
"You didn't like it?"
"I didn't agree with the characters' decisions," Tom said, with an ambivalent shrug. "You know why I prefer textbooks over novels. Their motivations don't make any sense to me, and their characters are contemptible."
What he didn't say was, I think it's pathetic for Butterfly to kill herself when she had a baby to look after.
That made him sound like a resentful whinger who cried himself to sleep because he'd had no one to tuck him in and sing him lullabies. He didn't care for the supposedly sublime joys of the maternal bond, his own or any other's; he'd stopped concerning himself with this lack many years ago. He refused to see himself as any lesser because this was an area in which he was ignorant, and would always remain so. Tom Riddle was lesser to no one.
"Do you think they could have ever been happy together?" Hermione asked suddenly.
Tom knew she was referring to the heroine of the opera and her pathetic lover; he stifled his snort of amusement. "Of course not. It's a tragedy, it's not supposed to be happy. That, and the playwright is contractually bound to kill as many people off by the last act as he can get away with. If they were real people, they'd be completely incompatible. They would've been better off if they'd stuck with their own kind."
Tom spoke with the utter certainty of his almost eleven years of life experience. To be sure, he hadn't meant his words to mirror the scathing tone certain people used when sending letters on the topic of the King's subjects in his colonial territories to the local editorial column. Those people that called themselves Social Darwinists but in actuality were plain old xenophobes.
(These people often overlapped with the segment of the population who had no tolerance for anyone whose income was less than £250 a year, and would have no difficulty drowning orphans at birth instead of putting them through eighteen years at Wool's. Which was a sensible act of mercy from Tom's point of view—he was quite the utilitarian in his daydreams of running the world—if he wouldn't have been one directly affected.)
"Outside the demands of the narrative, I mean. If they'd only talked to each other, if they'd learned to communicate past the cultural divisions. If only they loved each other," said Hermione, sighing mournfully. "Love has to count for something. It overcomes obstacles."
"Well, I hope someone explains that to the baby when it grows up," Tom remarked under his breath.
Hermione nudged him with her elbow and sighed again. "You mustn't be so cynical, Tom! I'm sure you'll change your mind about it when you're older."
"Hmm," was Tom's non-committal response. "I doubt it."
If love is as real and strong as you think it is, then things like indifference and hate are equally real and strong.
"It's certainly possible," Hermione said firmly. "After all, you did end up changing your mind on the use of area bombing as a method of urban development. Allowing yourself to compromise on a more moderate stance is a sign of emotional growth. Give yourself a few years and you'll be agreeing that there are other viable means of governance than a pure autocracy."
The motorcar, to his great regret, soon deposited him by the gates of the orphanage at a quarter 'til midnight. Tom shook Dr. Granger's hand, thanked Mrs. Granger, and bid adieu to Hermione, before heading through the gates (it was shameful how they hadn't gotten around to fixing that second A, dangling off a single nail; it made the place look like a particularly sleazy hotel) and up to the front door. Martha met him with a torch and a swat on the shoulder to wash up and go to bed quickly, no dallying.
In the dim half-light of the streetlamps, Tom hung his new coat up in his wardrobe, admiring the thick boiled wool and sturdy Bakelite buttons. It was a real "new", never having been owned by someone else. Hermione had given it to him still wrapped in the department store tissue paper. He set the souvenir theatre programme on his desk, the pages well-thumbed where he'd flipped to read English translations of the character dialogue.
He changed into grey flannel pyjamas, pulled the itchy blanket up to his chin, and stared at the lumpy plaster ceiling. If he was being honest, he wouldn't categorise this day as the best day of his life. Truthfully, he'd place the production quality of the opera at the same level as a motion picture show, and the entertainment quality inferior to that of a good book.
No, this was the most important day of his life so far. The day when his What-Could-Have-Been converged on the What-Will-Be, showing him a taste of what lay beyond the realm of books and dreams and the sooty brickwork of his current reality.
He had tasted; he was enraptured. Some part of him (all of him) would never be happy returning to the drab existence that was his What-Is-Now, having confirmed for himself that the matrons and minders were wrong—that there was nothing wrong with getting ideas above one's station. As if one's station was not only a condemnation from birth, but immutable, invalidating the presence of inborn aptitude and natural talent.
Delight and dissatisfaction warred within him, tumultuous thoughts keeping him from sleep.
Frustration.
He didn't feel culturally enriched after listening to three hours of Italian arias. Instead, he was irritated at the lack of language resources available to someone of his status. It was all the more galling when he recalled that the entrance examinations to Oxford and Cambridge required knowledge of Classical Greek and Latin. And one needed to enrol in a school like that to enter the higher echelons of British society.
Dr. Granger must have learned Latin at some point; if he still had his old textbooks, Hermione could get them for him.
Hermione.
She was... useful.
Tom's world was divided into a simple spectrum, labelled "Useful" and "Worthless" at each pole. Humouring Hermione served to advance his own interests. She, out of all the people with whom he had regular contact, had delivered the most value for the time invested. And it wasn't that unpleasant of a time, he was forced to acknowledge. There was more intelligent discourse in her postscripts than he got from an entire day of school lessons.
He might be indifferent to her taste in entertainment, but nevertheless, she remained valuable to him. And it must be reciprocated to some extent; she was indifferent to his political opinions but still found them interesting enough to debate him. She liked talking to him. And her company was... tolerable.
He wondered if he should tell her that.
He wondered whether or not it was a sign of emotional growth that he'd even considered the notion. Then he rolled over and closed his eyes.