A Girl Taken
Albus Dumbledore should have also explained that there were things in that world that would try to hurt their daughter. People that they should be wary of.
Instead, Dumbledore left that warm afternoon, unaware of the fate that he was leaving them to.
Weeks passed and the Grangers learned to cope with their daughter’s power. They fell more and more in love with her than they ever thought possible. She was so bright. So beautiful.
Every day with her was a challenge, but one they were so grateful to have.
Until her identity was discovered and fate came for her.
September 4th, 1981
Late in the night, after they lay their daughter down to rest, cuddled up to a small stuffed rabbit, Shepard and Emilia Granger retire to their living room, to watch the telly.
Just before eleven, a knock sounds at their door.
Shepard, ever the gentleman, kisses his wife’s temple and stands up, ready to greet whoever is on the other side.
He never stood a chance.
As Shepard falls to the floor in a heap, his wife is coming through the living room archway, a scream in her throat.
But she too falls before any sound could escape.
The man who knocked at their door wastes no time in stepping over their bodies and searching the pedestrian home.
He sneers at the pale paint and plastic framed photos on the walls, confirming his thoughts on the muggles at the bottom of the staircase. Nothing but bumbling idiots, completely unaware of their own insignificance.
Finding the girl is easy, but the man finds himself surprised at how small she was. She can't be much older than his son.
He picks up the child and stalks back downstairs, glancing once more at the dead muggles.
“Who?” The girl’s voice is soft, spittle at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes are still heavy with sleep.
The man ignores the child and soon enough they are apparating back to his own home, starkly different from the cardboard box he just left. All monolithic stone walls and arched windows.
The girl’s ears pop as they blink from one place to the next, and she begins to cry, spinning in the man’s arms and searching for her mother.
The man carries the girl into a dark study, lit with only a few candles and occupied by a tall thin man with dark hair.
“Lucius,” the brunette greets his knight, standing from a chair by the low burning fire.
“My Lord,” the man, Lucius, replies, setting the girl down and watching as she toddles and then falls, her cries growing louder.
Before the Dark Lord can say anything the room explodes. Flames jumping to two feet high and the papers littering Lucius’s desk flying around, catching fire and filling the room with smoke.
At the centre of the chaos, the little girl wails, her eyes reflecting the fire she has created.
The Dark Lord quiets the flames and sets the room to right, which is enough shock to the little girl for her to go silent and still.
“Who?” She asks again, her voice louder this time.
The Dark Lord walks close, wary of her ability to explode so instantly.
“Calm yourself, child,” he says, kneeling beside her and lifting a hand to brush away the tears on her cheeks.
“Who?” This time, she sounds afraid, not calm.
“I am Tom,” The Dark Lord tells her. “Tom.”
Lucius watches from the wall, nervous. He had never heard his Lord speak his name. Nor had he heard his tone so gentle.
“Tom,” the little girl parrots, her T soft and unsure. She reaches a hand out and presses her fingers to his cheek.
Then, for the first time since Albus Dumbledore, someone looks into Tom Riddle's mind.
He is no longer in Lucius’s study. Rather he is standing in his dorm room at Hogwarts, a familiar journal laid out on a desk in front of him.
Could she see what he was seeing? His own words sinking into their pages, a part of himself forever encapsulated in his school journal. A journal that in the present day sits across the study, locked in Lucius's home vault.
There is a bruise on the side of his hand that he can’t remember having, nor where he got it.
He was already a prefect by then.
The memory ends before he can think of any sort of explanation as the girl’s hand pulls from his cheek. Who is she to have to much power at such a young age?
Impossible.
Incredible.
“She’s exactly what I hoped,” he says, standing and looking at Lucius.
“I am pleased for you, my Lord,” Lucius replies.
Conjuring a small bird, the Dark Lord moves from his knee to sit on the floor, legs crossed.
“Speak with your wife, Malfoy. She’ll need a room,” Tom instructs, not even glancing away from the little girl.
Lucius takes his orders and flees.
“You and I will do great things, little Sparrow.”
In response, the little girl conjured a second bird, with pale blue feathers and a soft song, flying with the Dark Lord’s reddish-black sparrow.
Long after the child was taken from the study by a house elf, Tom stays awake, thinking of the prophecy and smiling smugly.
Albus Dumbledore believes that he can defeat him. He underestimates the anger that is fuelling his movement.
The immortal and all-powerful Lord Voldemort’s face splits into an alarming grin. He will not be thwarted by the Potter boy. His Sparrow will guarantee it.
Several things happen very quickly after that night.
Shepard and Emilia Granger are found murdered in their small home in Hampstead Gardens Suburb by their neighbours.
A muggleborn orphan is reported to have arrived behind the tall gates of Malfoy Manor.
The Potters change their secret keeper.
A half blood orphan is left on the front step of a grotesquely ordinary muggle house.
And the Dark Lord falls, leaving the wizarding world fractured and dangerous.
Once the dust settles and the celebrations fade into sober mourning, several of those events are written into history. Though none of them are recorded entirely accurately.
Harry Potter defeated the Dark Lord and was left with a lightning bolt scar which would mark him as the hero Boy Who Lived.
Neville Longbottom was given into the custody of his grandmother, a terrifyingly cloying witch.
Sirius Black was arrested and confined to Azkaban for the murder of Peter Pettigrew and 12 muggles.
Lucius Malfoy testified before the tribunal that he acted solely under the Imperius curse and that he was never a supporter of You-Know-Who. He offered up the orphan girl that he and his wife had taken in, a muggleborn child no less, as evidence to the contrary.
These things became the truth, and everything else was shoved to the back of a shelf, never to be touched again.