Serpents
July 1938
“Come on, Hermione, hurry up!” Tom shouted, flying down a hill on his bicycle as fast as he could. Coming up behind him just as fast was Hermione, whose curls flew back from her face as she coasted down the hill. They both came to a screeching halt at the bottom, and stared at the ramshackle structure before them.
It was a place Tom had always been curious about; his father had always warned him not to go past there. The resident was supposedly a raving madman who had it out for the Riddles. But, being a young boy and ever curious, Tom had decided to explore. And with Hermione visiting, it was the perfect time as he had backup should anything turn south.
They slowly pedaled closer to the rotting fence and hedge surrounding the equally decrepit shack, trying to catch a glance of the man who lived there.
“Tom, I don’t know about this,” Hermione hissed. The place gave her the shivers.
“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat, Hermione,” Tom grinned devilishly, his eyes twinkling with dark mischief. “Don’t you want to get a closer look?”
“I’d rather not!” she complained.
As soon as the words left her mouth, Tom shushed her and came to a halt, planting his feet on the ground on either side of his bicycle. His brows furrowed as he heard a familiar hissing; it was familiar to him because he could understand it perfectly. It was his secret language, his language with the snakes. He’d always used it whenever they’d gone to the countryside when he was in the orphanage, but he hadn’t dared use it in front of his family yet; he didn’t want to think of what creative things his grandfather would have to say if he knew he could talk to snakes.
“Hissy, hissy, little snakey, slither on the floor... You’ll be good to Morfin or he'll nail you to the door,” the voice taunted. Tom could also hear worried hissing from the snakes themselves; none of them seemed to fond of the game the man, Morfin, was playing.
“Tom!” Hermione complained as he got off his bicycle.
“Come here,” he hissed as he crouched near the hedge. “Tell me why you’re afraid.”
Hermione nearly shrieked when a small cluster of grass snakes slithered through the hedge. She hadn’t understood what Tom had said, but it was as if he’d summoned them. In an almost morbid fascination, she watched as one wrapped around Tom’s wrist and hissed softly to him in response. As soon as the snake ceased to hiss, Tom bolted upward.
“We need to go,” he told Hermione.
But it was too late. A bolt of red shot right past Hermione’s head, barely missing her, and they both turned to see a grotesque image of a man storming toward them.
“Who trespasses on the house of Gaunt?” the man demanded.
Hermione recognized whatever language Tom had used to summon the snakes to be the same one the man was using, and watched as the little grass snake around Tom’s wrist quickly slithered up his sleeve. While the sensation would have frightened Hermione, Tom didn’t seem fazed at all.
“You’re the man who lives in this house?” Tom asked, deciding it best to question him in the secret language. “You don’t look so frightening to me. Just sad.”
While Hermione couldn’t be sure, it seemed like Tom was taunting the man. But the man lowered his wand to appraise Tom, paying no mind to her — which Hermione certainly didn’t mind. She’d much rather he disappear back into his shack and leave them alone, but by the smug look on Tom’s face she could tell she wouldn’t be so fortunate.
“You look like that great Muggle from the great house,” the man hissed. “Yet you sound like a snake...” A look of realization dawned on the man’s face, and his lips curled into a deranged grin. “A half-snake, a half-snake, you are... not good enough, not pure enough, but half-snake you are...”
Tom’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?” he questioned. “I demand you tell me!”
“A baby-snake,” the man chortled. “Too young. Too dumb. Slither ’way, baby-snake! Slither back to that great muggle father of yours!”
“Tom, we should go...” Hermione mumbled, watching warily as his fists clenched at his sides. “We need to be back for supper... everyone will wonder where we’ve gotten off to, and I don’t want to get into trouble...”
Her voice broke through the intensity and Tom turned back to her.
“You’re right,” he admitted. By the time he spoke to her, the man had lost all interest then and had returned inside his shack. Hermione had a strange feeling the man had said something interesting to Tom, but she knew better than to pry; Tom was a strange boy, only sharing what he wanted you to know and keeping his cards close to his chest. He wasn’t as open as most children, but Hermione summed it up to his having been raised in an orphanage.
By the time they’d pedaled all the way back up the hill to the Riddle’s, supper was just about to put out. Tom and Hermione stashed their bicycles in the back near Mr. Bryce’s cottage, and ran into the kitchen. Mrs. Hawkins tutted at them as they hurriedly scrubbed their hands before racing to the dining room.
“How good of you to finally join us,” Thomas Riddle scowled.
“Did you have a nice ride?” Mr. Granger inquired, cutting the tension slightly as Tom and Hermione sat down.
It was then that Hermione realized that Tom had forgotten to put the little grass snake back down in the hedge. She gulped and soon focused on the plate in front of her, stabbing a piece of grapefruit with her fork while Tom held a conversation with his father about football.
“I wonder if they will have a sport at Hogwarts,” Tom Sr. pondered aloud. “I’m sure those magic folk could come up with something.”
“I don’t understand why we are talking of such things at the table,” Thomas chided.
“Now, really,” Mary sighed. “Is this any way to speak when we have guests?”
“Well she’s one of them too!” Thomas waved his butter knife flippantly at Hermione, causing Mr. Granger to stiffly put down his own utensils. “Just as strange as him!”
“Take that back,” Tom snarled.
“Tom,” the warning tone in Tom Sr’s voice could not be missed. Underneath the table, Hermione grabbed Tom’s hand and squeezed it. “Watch yourself.”
“No matter,” Thomas continued, “at least we all will be rid of you for the better part of the year when you go to that cursed school... if it even exists, mind you. I certainly have my doubts!” And so on and so forth, he continued throughout supper.
Hermione found his words extremely hurtful and once or twice tried her best not to let her emotions get the better of herself, but he seemed to trigger the opposite response in Tom; where he first was angry and filled with rage, he soon appeared cold and detached from what his grandfather was saying. It was almost alarming.
But what he said to her that night as they brushed their teeth was even more alarming.
“Someday, Hermione,” he said, “I’ll make all the people like him disappear. And then it’ll just be you and me.”