Chapter 1
The headmaster kept a firm grip on his pupil’s shoulder, trying to steer the poor beaten boy through the mass of journalists and reporters who were relentlessly pushing and shoving each other in a desperate attempt to pry an answer through the quivering lips of the Boy-who-lived. They were like famished hounds seeing a fresh slab of meat spread out a few centimetres away from their snouts, hackles up and teeth bared.
Harry kept his head low, shoulders hunched, eyes glued to the polished black-marbled floor as he and professor Dumbledore made their way through the halls of the Ministry of Magic. He could see his reflection looking back at him on the glossy floor. Dark bags etched themselves under his half-lidded emerald eyes. His dark ebony hair stuck out in all directions with small shards of glass clinging to his dark strands, exposing his still throbbing scar to the world. His skin was marred and caked with the waning crimson of drying blood. What a pitiful sight he was indeed.
He felt as if he was suffocating, drowning in the blinding flashes of cameras. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think. He could hear the deafening sound of the voices and yet, at the same time, he couldn’t hear a single word. The corner of his eyes stung with unshed tears and he felt a storm of emotions well up in his chest. An uncomfortable ball formed at the base of his throat in which he was unable to swallow down no matter how hard he tried. He almost let out a strangled laugh when he realized that he would much rather be in that goddamn cupboard instead of here. Was this the price he had to pay for the world to believe him? The people standing in front of him, the ones trying to sympathize with him, are the same that ridiculed him and called him a liar. He hated them so much that he could’ve killed them all on the spot … That last thought scared him. He felt a shiver run down his spine, killing, why would he think that? Harry started clasping and unclasping his clammy hands, a nervous habit of his. He was just as bad as Voldemort for thinking that. How could he wish death upon all these people? They were scared and didn’t want to believe what was happening. Yes, they were all idiots in reacting the way they did but Harry had to remind himself that they were probably thinking about what this news would mean for them in the near future. Fear can turn any man blind and stupid.
Harry let out a sigh that sounded more like a stifled sob. He felt Dumbledore squeeze his shoulder in reassurance. The boy looked up, setting his gaze on the headmaster’s face. The old man was looking straight ahead, chin up, with a stoic mask fitted to his visage. He took perfectly paced strides as he led Harry towards the exit. Hurried but not aggressively so. Once out of sight of the vulture-like reporters, Dumbledore held his arm out to Harry and looked down at him with an expectant look. His eyes had lost their twinkle and instead, a grave shadow fell behind his spectacles. He didn’t say anything and didn’t try to lighten the mood, he just waited for the boy to take his arm. Harry took his arm and both he and the professor disappeared out of sight in a blink of an eye.
* * *
“I must admit to some confusion on receiving your letter Mr Dumbledore,” the orphanage director confessed as she escorted his past self up the winding path of a wide-set staircase with the present Dumbledore right at their tails, walking with his hands clasped behind his back and his long beard swishing about as he walked up the steps. She was a middle-aged woman with white streaks peppering her blond hair. She looked tired with dark bags painted under her eyes and seemed as if her enthusiasm had chipped away with the years.
”All the years that Tom’s been here he’s never once had a family visitor… there have been incidents with the other children, nasty things.” She paused and stopped in front of a familiar grey-painted door. The door, itself was used and needed a fresh coat of paint as it was peeling off like dead skin. She turned and looked behind her shoulder giving Dumbledore a furtive and doubtful glance. The matron knocked twice first and then opened the door,“Tom, you have a visitor.” She pushed open the door allowing the professor to look into the small, slightly cramped space. The room was quite unfurnished, containing only the bare necessities. A once proud wardrobe that had since outlived its glory days stood tall at the entrance of the bedroom. Below a fairly large window, at the end of the room, was situated a metal-framed bed, neatly made with plain white coverings albeit its rusting frame. And there, at his desk, as still as a statue and as proud as a king sat Tom Riddle. The boy’s neatly coiffed back black hair contrasted greatly with his porcelain white skin giving the impression that he was but a doll; eyes following every step you’d make, never leaving you out of its sight.
* * *
The young boy seated at his desk glared up at Dumbledore with suspicion.
“You’re a doctor aren’t you?” He accused, small hands balling into fists and jaw clenching. His feet barely grazed the grey-stone floor as he kept his posture rigid and reserved. The professor kept eye contact with the child’s piercing gaze.
“No, I’m a professor,” said the past Dumbledore as he sat down on the bed opposite to the child. Making the springs of the bed cry out under the added weight.
“I don’t believe you. She wants me to be looked at. They think I'm different.”
“Well, perhaps they’re right.” Responded Dumbledore with a hint of a smile pulling at the corners of his lips and eyes twinkling with amusement.
“I’m not mad!” Tom cut in defensively. Watching the interaction with concentration was the current headmaster, trying to absorb every detail of the encounter like a sponge. He studied the memory with great interest, taking down each word, each reaction, each movement. It was the tenth time that day he watched his past self interact with Tom Riddle trying to find any further clue to help them for the upcoming war. He knew that Voldemort prolonged his life by creating horcruxes and he knew that he had at least six (counting the two that were destroyed: the ring and the diary). But why did he still feel like he was missing a big piece of the puzzle, and an important piece at that. Deep in thought, the professor started to pace up and down the narrow room. When he looked up, he was surprised to see a small child peeking behind the used doorframe, marked by the years of abuse, and into the room. They focused on the strange man talking to Tom with large eyes peering apprehensively at the scene unfolding and chocolate brown hair curling behind one of its little ears. How had he not noticed the child before? He frowned, deep lines indenting his forehead and his lips forming a rigid straight line. Who was this child?
The child blinked, gaze going up, aimed straight at Dumbledore. Their eyes crossed the path. The child’s eyes grew as wide as saucers and slowly started walking backwards until the small of their back hit the wall. Their little chest heaved up and down like a startled rabbit having been spotted by a fox. And all of a flash of time, turned around and raced down the gloomy halls of the orphanage, small footsteps echoing through the building.
Dumbledore was left standing there with wide eyes. Had the child noticed him? No, impossible! Memories of people can’t notice you, never in the history of magic has this ever occurred. Maybe the child just saw something frightening behind him like a spider. But in the back of the headmaster’s mind, he knew the child saw him, he doesn’t know how but he just does. Though the question still remained, who was that child? They were obviously another orphan from Wool’s Orphanage but who were they? One of Tom’s peers? A friend of his?
The headmaster of Hogwarts pulled himself out of the pensive. The jade-coloured light reflected on the aged face of the man, accentuating the shadows and folds of his skin. His knuckles turned white as he tightly gripped the side of the shallow bowl. He took a deep intake of breath and put back the regrettable memory into the labelled vial and placed it in its designated spot amongst the other hundreds of bottled up memories. In the process of doing so, his elbow knocked down a vial that was hidden at the end of the row. It fell and rolled under the small table holding the pensive. It emitted a small pulsing light almost as if it was calling out. He carefully picked it up, brushed off the dust from its surface, no tag or marking was found on its body. Curious, he poured Its content into the pensive and plunged his face into the cognitive liquid.
The memory fell into place like ink in water creating columns of coloured clouds taking the form of the setting. There sat a teenage Tom focused on his task of what appeared to be writing a letter. He sat alone at the Slytherin table, most of his peers have left for the Christmas holidays to their families. He elegantly ran his plume across the surface of a half-filled page of a black leather-bound diary. Crossing his Ts and putting dots on top of his Is and then signing off with a handsome signature all in a graceful swoop of his hand.
Slughorn, having seen his star student sitting at the vacant table, came down from the teacher’s table and sat next to the lad.
“ Tom, my boy! What are you doing writing essays on Christmas Eve!”
Tom looked up from his paper and turned towards the professor and let out a small, forced smile contrasting with the annoyance found in the pools of green of eyes.
” Nothing to worry about, professor. I was merely writing a letter to a very dear friend of mine.”
“Ahhh!” Said Slughorn with a knowing look, “Love is it, me boy? I remember at your age running after the girls. Though I’ll have to admit that at that age, my love interests changed every week, almost as much as the face of the moon”. Slughorn let out a loud boisterous laughter, slapping his knee in humour and squinting his eyes until they were merely just two slits carved into his face with his brow raised high into his forehead.
Tom responded once again with a forced smile, impatiently drumming his long, pale fingers across the wooden surface of the table. A suffocating silence draped itself over the potion teacher and his student. Slughorn waited with the eagerness of a dog for his favoured student to answer only to be met with stifling awkwardness. His smile quivered as his gaze faltered succumbing under the scrutiny of Tom. The professor stayed seated for a while longer making small spasmodic movements as if whether or not he should leave and get back to his now cold plate or stay.
“Well, I better leave yah to it then, eh me boy!” Boomed Slughorn as he rose from the table, eyes crinkling at the corners as he gave Tom one last smile and walked back to the teacher’s table at the front of the Grand Hall.
Tom glared daggers at professor Slughorn as he made his way back to his meal. Stupid old man, he thought to himself. He looked back down at his paper and reread it. His whole body relaxed and Dumbledore noticed, as he came closer to Tom, that the boy had a soft smile gracing his lips and eyes filled to the rim with endearment and love. Dumbledore had never seen such an expression on the future Dark Lord. Never before had anybody thought that Voldemort could have ever mustered such emotions.
He pulled out of the pensive and this time walked over to his desk and sat down, leaning back, head tilted up towards the ceiling of his study with his eyes closed. He was missing the big picture, but what? How could he find the missing piece to the enigma?
He looked around at his surroundings and his wise eyes landed on an ancient photograph on one of the shelves of his towering bookcases. He got up and walked over picking up the image. It was an old picture dating back to when he was but a teacher. It displayed all the professors smiling and laughing. His eyes scanned the moving photo until he noticed in the corner professor Slughorn raising a wine glass towards the camera as a sign of acknowledgement to another successful year gone by. The old potion teacher left Hogwarts after learning that his favourite student was Lord Voldemort. The headmaster knew that Slughorn tried to distort many memories containing Tom Riddle. He rewrote many of his memories in a foolhardy attempt to reroute his fault and to recuperate what he perceived to be his innocents. Though in all truth and honesty, any fool who tries to erase the past must come to realize that once the pages of Time has been stained with the ink of yesterday nothing can be done to remove it. Dumbledore had to get him back at Hogwarts and he knew just who might be able to convince the coward. Slughorn was a collector and what better piece to put on one’s shelf other than the Boy-who-lived. He will have to go fetch the poor boy and bring him with him to go see Slughorn. He already knew that the man was going to agree especially when a new trophy was flaunted right underneath his nose. Though, he felt pity for using the boy like a tool. The boy cracked like a fragile egg after the event at the Ministry. He’ll have to send Harry to The Burrow to recuperate. Molly will surely be able to stitch Harry back into one whole piece. But for now, things could wait.
“The course of fate will come in due time.”