Chapter Text
It was late October and Amy Benson had come down with diphtheria and infected half the orphanage. Tom had thought from her first cough that Mrs Cole ought to have locked her up in the shed by the outhouse and spared the rest of them the misery of her infection. She hadn’t, of course, and still had the nerve to be dismayed by the consequences.
“Now, tonight I expect you all to say a prayer for the babies and other children,” she said to those of them who’d been well enough to drag themselves down for supper. “And I mean all of you. Yes, don’t grumble Billy, I mean you too.”
“Yes, Mrs Cole,” the children chorused.
Privately, Tom decided he’d pray for Amy to die extra quickly for causing them all such inconvenience.
He helped Mrs Cole ladle out the stew for the children, making sure to put most of the meagre meat and vegetables in his own bowl. For Billy Stubbs, he served up all the bones and gristle.
Billy looked murderous but didn’t say anything. After Tom had done away with his rabbit, he’d stopped being as much of an annoyance. That was lucky for him because the next time Tom wouldn’t have settled for an animal.
*
It was on this same Sunday that a strange change in circumstances came about.
The first indication that something was afoot was when his window stopped rattling in its frame. Tom had been reading in bed, unable to sleep with Roger Pike coughing and carrying on in the bed beside him, the wind outside kicking up a fuss almost louder than Roger. Yet, as if it’d been shoved away into a box, the wind stopped all at once, leaving an odd stillness outside his window.
Curious, Tom got up out of bed and went to the window, cupping his hands above his eyes and trying to look out. It wasn’t much use; all he could see was inky blackness, and even that was soon obscured by the fog of his breath.
“What’s going on?” Roger asked, voice coming out all congested and nasally.
“Shut up,” Tom replied.
Then came the knocking at the front door, rattling the wood in the frame and echoing up the stairs for all the children to hear. Excited murmuring started up, followed by a cacophony of coughing as all the invalids started trying to sit up.
“Quiet! All of you!” Mrs Cole bellowed, fumbling with the hallway light. She was not dressed in anything more formal than a dressing gown, hair up in metal rollers and a squalling infant over her shoulder. In her other hand was a bottle of gin, and when she stumbled to a stop before the door, she looked as though she couldn’t decide whether to let go of the baby or the bottle.
Another knock came, and she came to a decision, stowing the bottle inside the empty flowerpot by the umbrella stand and opening the door a smidgeon.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m dreadfully sorry for bothering you at such an hour, madam.” It was a man’s voice, deep and mellow, with an unmistakable aristocratic cut to his accent.
Some toff who can’t keep time, Tom thought, but was curious nevertheless. Excited whispers swelled through the crowd of listening children. All of them knew money when they heard it.
“Well, that’s quite alright. Quite alright, I suppose,” Mrs Cole said, also having perked up at the sound of his accent. “Come in, Mr…?”
“Lestrange,” he said. “Rodolphus Lestrange.”
Mrs Cole handed off the baby to Miss Baker and took Mr Lestrange up to her office. As soon as the door was shut, the children rushed over to press their ears against the door, heedless of Miss Baker’s half-hearted remonishing.
Tom didn’t join them, not keen to catch diphtheria, and too prideful to appear so desperate. He went back to his room and continued reading his book, taking advantage of the time he’d have before someone came to bother him about the lamp.
Thus, it startled him more than he cared to admit when Roger came tumbling into the room in a tangle of excited limbs and wheezed, “Tom, he’s here for you!”
“Why?” he asked, holding his book so tight his knuckles went white. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Roger shook his head impatiently. “No, he says he’s your family.”
For a moment, Tom found himself at a loss for words. His family? Could it—but no, his father’s name was Tom Riddle too, if what Mrs Cole said was true. And if he was ever going to come looking for Tom, he would’ve done it a lot sooner. He went downstairs anyway because he thought that perhaps Mr Lestrange was from his mother’s family. He didn’t know anything about her. Not even her name.
He knew something was off from the moment he stepped into the room. There was an odd tingling in his ears, a queer heaviness to the air. Mrs Cole was sitting behind her desk, just as she always did when Tom was in trouble, but her mouth was lax and slightly open, her eyes dazed and distant.
Mr Lestrange was sitting across from her, petting a green and yellow snake that was coiled in his lap. He didn’t turn to look, even though he would surely have heard Tom coming in.
The door shut behind Tom with a loud thud. There’d been no wind, but he supposed one of the children might’ve shut it by accident.
Finally, Mr Lestrange turned around. He was a big man, taller than Tom even when sitting down. His face was wide, his nose long and crooked, and he was dressed in a strange, long black cloak—as if he was some sort of bishop. His smile was kindly, but his eyes such a cold, clear blue that Tom felt much as though he was under a microscope.
“Hello,” Mr Lestrange said. “The good Mrs Cole tells me that your name is Tom Riddle.”
Tom’s gaze darted to Mrs Cole, but there was no reaction from her. He was beginning to wonder if Mr Lestrange was a hypnotist. There were drinks out on the desk and Mrs Cole had finished hers, but Mr Lestrange hadn’t touched his. Did he poison her?
“What’s it to you?” he said.
“Don’t mind her,” Mr Lestrange said, the next time Tom looked to Mrs Cole. “She’s just a Muggle.”
Tom didn’t much like his tone, though he had no idea what a ‘Muggle’ was. He remained silent, frowning, wishing very much that he’d just stayed up in his room and ignored Roger.
The snake lifted its head and peered at Tom. “Sskiny little sstick,” it said.
Tom did his best not to respond, but something in his expression must’ve given him away because Mr Lestrange’s polite smile transformed to triumph. “You understand him, then?”
“Are you from the Church?” Tom asked.
“No,” Mr Lestrange said and laughed, a deep mellow thing. “Most certainly not. Dear boy, I’ve come here due to my connections to your mother’s family. As soon as I heard that her son, perhaps the last of the Gaunt line, was being kept in a Muggle orphanage, I had to come at once.”
Tom wrinkled his nose. It all sounded an awful lot like Oliver Twist—a favourite among the children at Wool’s—and Tom wasn’t stupid enough to believe him. “What’s a Muggle?”
“One of them,” Mr Lestrange said, gesturing at the wall that Tom knew the other Wool’s children were waiting behind. “Those ordinary, mundane creatures. You know as well as I do that you’re different.”
Tom fought to stay impassive. He was different and he knew it. He could go unseen, make animals do what he wanted, hurt people when they annoyed him. But he saw no reason to trust Mr Lestrange.
And then Mr Lestrange pulled a strange stick from the inside of his long black cloak and swished it. Mrs Cole’s bookshelf turned into a plush armchair, all the books floating over to the corner of the room and stacking themselves up. “Have a seat,” he said.
Tom sat.
Mr Lestrange leaned forward, still petting the snake’s head. “You can speak to it, can’t you? Would you show me?”
Tom glanced at Mrs Cole one last time, but nothing had changed. “Come here,” he said to the snake. It slithered off Mr Lestrange’s lap and up onto Tom’s.
“Ssorry,” it said, sounding quite contrite. “I wasn’t aware that you were a Sspeaker.”
“You’re forgiven,” Tom replied. He knew he was scrawny, of course, but still thought it hypocritical for a snake to compare someone to a stick as an insult—big bendy twigs as they were.
“Brilliant,” Mr Lestrange said, clapping his big hands together. “Simply marvellous.”
“Can you speak to snakes?” Tom asked.
“I’m afraid not. That’s a trait passed down your bloodline directly from Salazar Slytherin himself,” Mr Lestrange said. “My bloodline has its own traits, though nothing appeared for me. My wife’s line boasts many Metamorphmagi—people who can transform their features at will. Quite useful when they have a lot of control over it, as you can imagine. But, of course, there’s one thing you and I share for certain: magic.”
Tom felt less suspicious about Mr Lestrange upon hearing that he was married. Also, the word ‘magic’ wouldn’t stop bouncing around in his head. That was what he was, he knew it down to his bones. He’d always known he was better than the other children. This was proof.
“What do you want with me, then?” he said, looking Mr Lestrange up and down with an appraising eye. If he wanted to adopt him, then Tom reckoned he would’ve said so already.
Mr Lestrange hesitated. “I want,” he said at last, “to give you a more appropriate home than one infested with Muggles.”
*
And so it came about that Mrs Cole and all the rest of the orphans had their memories wiped of Tom and all the trouble that had come with him. He found himself in a horse-drawn carriage, of all things, being ferried off to God knows where, still not entirely certain he’d made the correct decision.
For his part, Mr Lestrange didn’t seem to be able to explain how Tom was related to him, simply that he was related ‘both to the Lestranges and Blacks’. What that meant for the legal and moral status of Mr Lestrange’s marriage to a woman named ‘Bellatrix Black’ was not something Tom cared to consider.
“I’m afraid my house is not in fit condition to handle a child, but my brother-in-law, Mr Lucius Malfoy, has been kind enough to offer his home to you for as long as you’d care to stay.” As if suddenly remembering an obligation, he hastened to add, “You should consider the Malfoys your blood too, dear boy. I’m certain Lucius is your cousin or uncle of some sort.”
Tom looked at him suspiciously. “And you knew my mother personally, did you?” Already, he was regretting having agreed to come with Mr Lestrange. Better a drunkard for a guardian than an incestuous network of crackpots.
“Oh, yes, certainly,” Mr Lestrange said, scratching the bridge of his long nose. “Certainly, certainly.”
“Tell the truth,” Tom snapped, feeling very cross with all of Mr Lestrange’s waffling. He had never been a child who was fond of ambiguity, and he hated being lied to more than anything else.
“Well, not personally,” Mr Lestrange admitted. “Though I would very much have liked to. Lovely woman, Merope—I’ve heard. Very, er, beautiful too.” From his tone through the last sentence, it was obvious he’d already forgotten that Tom had ordered him not to lie.
Tom subsided moodily into his seat, arms crossed. The horses trotted along at a fair pace, yet he couldn’t help but think about how much faster they’d be travelling if they’d taken a car. “Where can I get one of those?” he asked, gesturing at Mr Lestrange’s wand.
Mr Lestrange laughed. “When you’re old enough, Tom, I’ll buy you one myself. But not till you’re eleven. It isn’t good to stress a developing magical core.”
“Eleven?” Tom repeated, appalled. That was two whole years away.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Ugh,” Tom said, though he knew it was poor manners. The carriage was awfully drafty and he was tired, yet too suspicious of Mr Lestrange to let himself fall asleep. “Who’s Salazar Slytherin?”
“A very important man in our world,” Mr Lestrange said. “He was one of the founders of Hogwarts—the school you’ll be attending once you turn eleven.”
“Hogwarts?” Tom said, wrinkling his nose. What a terrible name. “What’s so good about Hogwarts? Is it like Eton? I haven’t got any money.”
“I’ve not heard of Eton. Hogwarts is the school that all magical children attend in Britain. I imagine there is a fund for less fortunate children, but you won’t need to worry about that.” Mr Lestrange’s lip curled as he said ‘less fortunate children’ as if they were a distasteful oddity. Tom decided he didn’t like him very much.
It wasn’t a difficult decision. Tom didn’t like anyone very much.
The carriage took them to King’s Cross Station, from which they took a train from a hidden station hidden between platforms nine and ten. This, more than anything else, convinced Tom that all Mr Lestrange’s talk of magic wasn’t nonsense.
“This train goes all the way up to Scotland, but we’ll just be taking it to Wiltshire,” Mr Lestrange was saying. Tom listened half-heartedly, staving off sleep with diminishing success.
Perhaps Mr Lestrange finally noticed this, as he took off his cloak and used his magic to turn it into a blanket for Tom.
“Rest now,” he said. “You’ve got time.”
*
It was still night when Tom woke again. Mr Lestrange was standing up and looking out the window. Tom could see the faint glow of a lantern emerging from the misty gloom.
Mr Lestrange noticed him sitting up and smiled. “Perfect timing,” he said. “We’re just pulling into the station now. Someone’s come down from the Manor to take you up.”
“You aren’t coming?” Tom asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Ah, no. My dear wife will be expecting me back. It’s best I don’t disappoint her.” He chuckled nervously.
Tom didn’t ask any more questions because he didn’t much care about the answers. He tried to give Mr Lestrange his cloak-turned-blanket back, but he insisted Tom keep it.
“You’ll be needing something warmer than that dreadful orphanage uniform where you’re going,” he said. “And I’ll just be apparating to the Lestrange Estate anyhow.”
“Apparating?” Tom asked, looking down at his grey shirt and trousers, a touch self-conscious. It was true that he didn’t have much in the way of winter layers, but that was because he’d grown too fast and there weren’t any available from the older boys yet.
“Witches and wizards can disappear from one place and appear in another. It’s a tricky skill to master, and it isn’t safe for children, but it is convenient, nonetheless. When you’re older—”
“Yes, yes,” Tom said.
They were greeted by a stern-faced young woman wearing severe navy-blue robes, a pointed black hat pinned to her hair. “Mr Lestrange,” she said, then looked down her nose at Tom. “You must be Master Thomas.”
“Just Tom,” he said.
“This is Miss Selwyn,” Mr Lestrange said. “She’s in charge of the Manor elves.”
“Elves?” Tom asked.
Mr Lestrange winced. It seemed as if Tom’s ignorance personally embarrassed him. How Tom was supposed to know all about a world he’d only learnt about a scant few hours ago, he wasn’t sure.
Miss Selwyn blinked once, slow and judgemental. “Where did you find this child, Mr Lestrange?”
“Despite not being of Muggle birth, he’s found himself at the disadvantage of being raised by them for the past few years,” Mr Lestrange said. “I trust you’ll take the time to educate him in our world.”
“Of course,” she said, thin mouth twisting sourly.
The train’s horn went off, a final warning before it pulled out of the station. Against the hush of a country train station with not a house around for miles, the sound was deafening. Tom wrapped the blanket tighter around himself and shivered as the wind picked up, displaced by the train.
“You’d best head off now, I suppose,” Mr Lestrange said. He reached out and patted Tom on the head. Tom frowned and only allowed it because Mr Lestrange had turned his cloak into a blanket for him.
Mr Lestrange took his knapsack to put in the back of the carriage. It was then that Tom noticed something rather odd. The creatures pulling the carriage were not horses, though they shared a similar shape—black with milky, sightless eyes and bodies so emaciated all their bones showed through. They had wings like bats, tattered and frail.
“What are they?” he asked.
“You can see them?” Mr Lestrange asked. He and Miss Selwyn were looking at Tom as if he was the oddity, rather than the beasts.
“Yes, of course.”
“They’re Thestrals,” Miss Selwyn said briskly. “Quite harmless, I assure you. There’s no need to worry.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Tom said, though he gave the animals one last suspicious look before he clambered into the carriage. It was less that he thought they’d attack him, and more that he thought they might collapse and die of starvation halfway to Mr Malfoy’s house, leaving Tom stranded with that bore of a woman.
Finally, all was settled, and Mr Lestrange saw them off from the station. He stood at the platform, waving as the carriage trundled down the gravel path. Then, just as he was almost swallowed by the mist and darkness, he stopped waving and took his wand from his pocket. There was a loud crack, almost as loud as the train horn, and he was gone.
When Tom pulled his head back into the cabin, he saw Miss Selwyn watching him with her beady black eyes.
“I hear Mr Lestrange was looking for you in London,” she said.
“Yes,” Tom said.
“Did you have any idea about your magic before then?”
“No,” Tom said, though that wasn’t true. He just didn’t feel much like answering her. It was, by his estimate, at least four in the morning, and he was tired, cold and had already decided he didn’t like Miss Selwyn either.
She continued to pester him with questions about London, but when he only returned monosyllabic responses, she changed her strategy.
“I suppose you don’t know anything about Mr Malfoy, then,” she said, black eyes gleaming.
Tom shrugged, though it wasn’t too clear if she noticed, as wrapped up in the blanket as he was.
“A queer sort of fellow,” she said. “Hurt his back as a boy and has walked with a cane ever since. Some call him a hunchback. Mind you, I consider that an exaggeration, but without a doubt there’s something wrong with him. You won’t see much of him around the house, he’s always down in London on some sort of Ministry business. I suppose he doesn’t like to stay too long at Malfoy Manor—I certainly can’t blame him.”
Tom began to listen more carefully, curious about the man who would be his guardian. He was pleased to hear that Mr Malfoy wouldn’t be at the Manor often. That meant Tom would be left to his own devices.
“Yes, the Manor. I suppose you’d like to hear about that too, wouldn’t you?” she said, seeming to recognise his interest. “It’s at least six hundred years old, with every sort of garden you could imagine, forests stretching past the borders of the land, a lake home to a subspecies of Merpeople that you won’t find anywhere other than the Malfoy Estate. I remember when I was a young girl Malfoy Manor used to host balls and parties that everyone who was anyone would be lining up to attend. And the coverage in the Prophet! I was so envious.” She fell silent, thoughtful. “It’s a different matter now, of course. Hundreds of rooms, but most of them are locked up.”
“What changed?” Tom asked, despite trying to stay disinterested.
“Well,” she said, clearly enjoying her captive audience, “it was Mrs Malfoy who was responsible for most the balls and parties, though they were held to the benefit of Mr Malfoy’s political power, of course. He loved her dearly, I’m told, far more than a man as cold as he could be imagined to. There wasn’t anything in the world he wouldn’t do for her. There wasn’t a woman more beautiful, charming and clever than her—”
“But she died,” Tom finished, abruptly bored with the story. People doing stupid things for love irritated him more than it interested him. He couldn’t think of an emotion more useless than love. Mr Malfoy had been demoted to dullard in his head already.
“Yes, she died,” Miss Selwyn said, looking most offended. “And it was a terribly sad thing. Mr Malfoy was never the same, and Malfoy Manor has not ever been the same either. Now he cares about no one and nothing. He’s at the Manor rarely, and when he is there, he shuts himself up in the West Wing and won’t let anyone but Mr Davis and the elves see him.”
“He should just get a new wife then,” Tom said and yawned.
Miss Selwyn, perhaps only now realising what an unpleasant little child she was responsible for, opened and shut her mouth a few times before subsiding into her seat with a huffed, “My word!”
It was lucky for both of them that the carriage pulled up in front of the Manor at that moment. Miss Selwyn got out first and waved her wand to make Tom’s knapsack float along behind her.
Tom trailed after her, trying not to trip over the blanket. It was cold in a crisp, fresh way that he’d never experienced before in London, and he wasn’t sure that he liked it. Out behind him, the dark, hulking shapes of hills seemed to loom, and above he could see the stars and moon brighter than he ever had in his life. In his ignorance, he thought it magic, not understanding the effect of the light pollution and smog ever-present in the city he’d grown up in.
It wasn’t so much that he missed the stench of London. Rather, the change in environment reminded him sharply of how far removed he was from everything he knew. As much as he’d disliked Wool’s and everyone who lived there, he had understood the rules of that world. He’d carved out his own little place in that orphanage, had been able to intimidate the other children into leaving him alone, or doing what he’d told them to do.
At Wool’s, he’d had power. He wasn’t sure what he had at Malfoy Manor. Perhaps nothing.
They were greeted at the door by a sallow-faced man with sagging, yellow skin and a sombre expression. Combined with his high-necked black robes it made him look rather like a funeral director of some sort.
“Take the boy to his rooms,” the man said, forgoing any sort of greeting. “Mr Malfoy doesn’t want to see him. He’s off to the French Ministry early in the morning.”
“Very well, Mr Davis,” Miss Selwyn sniffed. “So long as I know what’s expected of me, I can manage.”
“You are expected, Miss Selwyn, to ensure he is not disturbed, and that he doesn’t see what he does not want to see.”
And so Tom was led up a broad staircase and down a corridor, then up a short flight of stairs and down two more corridors, till finally Miss Selwyn opened up a door to a room with a fire roaring in the hearth and a cup of steaming hot chocolate on the bedside table.
“Well, here you are. This room and the next are where you’ll live—and you must keep to them. Don’t you forget that!”
And so it was that Tom spent his first night at Malfoy Manor, and he’d never felt less inclined to listen to an adult in his life.