TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE- THE STORY

RATED- T

For violence, language, and some angst.

PART ONE- THE UNKNOWN SECRETS

CHAPTER ONE

Albus Dumbledore walked through the streets on the rainy, dreary day in London. His bewilderingly strange plum velvet suit indeed would have been drenched, if not for his dark colored umbrella. He walked through the gate and up the steps to the front door of the large and adverse orphanage of the city area. He knocked once on the large, aging, grey door.

It was opened a few moments after by a scruffy looking girl who had on an apron.

"Good afternoon," said Dumbledore. "I have an appointment with a Mrs. Cole, who, I believe, is the matron here?"

"Oh! Um… just a mo'… MRS. COLE!" she yelled over her shoulder.

The bellow was met with a frantic and irked reply from Mrs. Cole who was coming down the landing.

The girl turned back to Dumbledore, eying his suit as if it were some failed joke.

"Come in, she's on 'er way."

Dumbledore smiled kindly and stepped into the hallway of the orphanage.

A skinny, beleaguered- looking woman came scurrying toward them. Her sharp featured face looked more anxious than unkind as she continued

"….and take the iodine upstairs to Martha, Billy Stubbs has been picking his scabs and Eric Whalley's oozing all over his sheets- chicken pox on top of everything else!"

She ceased the frenzied ordering as she came with a wide eyed look to Dumbledore's suit which he was beginning to think wasn't as good a muggle disguise as he had hoped.

"Good afternoon," said Dumbledore, holding out his hand.

Mrs. Cole continued to gape at him.

"My name is Albus Dumbledore. I sent you a letter requesting an appointment and you very kindly invited me here today."

Mrs. Cole blinked a few times and then, after deciding that Dumbledore wasn't an illusion, said feebly

"Oh yes. Well- well then- you'd better come into my room. Yes"

She and Dumbledore both entered a small office that also seemed to be part sitting room.

"I am here, as I told you in my letter, to discuss Tom Riddle and arrangements for his future," said Dumbledore.

"Are you family?" asked Mrs. Cole.

"No, I am a teacher," replied Dumbledore. "I have come to offer Tom a place at my school."

"What school's this, then?"

"It is called Hogwarts," said Dumbledore.

"And how come you're interested in Tom?"

"We believe he has qualities we are looking for."

"You mean he's won a scholarship? How can he have done? He's never been entered for one."

"Well, his name has been down for our school since birth-,"

"Who registered him? His parents?"

Dumbledore, then deciding that Mrs. Cole was an inconveniently sharp woman, took out his wand while picking up a blank piece of paper.

"Here," Dumbledore offered, waving his wand in Mrs. Cole's face so as to confound her. "I think this will make everything clear."

Mrs. Cole's vacant, expressionless eyes glanced at the paper and stated

"That seems perfectly in order."

She looked over at a bottle of gin and two glasses to drink that had certainly not been there a moment before.

"Er- may I offer you a glass of gin?" she asked as her eyes slid back into focus.

"Thank you very much," the beaming Dumbledore replied.

After the drinks were served, and Mrs. Cole had drunk hers in one gulp, Dumbledore brought up a pressing question that was very important.

"I was wondering whether you could tell me anything of Tom Riddle's history? I think he was born here in the orphanage?"

"That's right," said Mrs. Cole, helping herself to more gin.

"I remember it clear as anything, because I'd just started here myself. New Year's Eve and bitter cold, snowing, you know. Nasty night. And this girl, not much older than I was at the time, came staggering up the front steps. Well she wasn't the first. We took her in, and she had the baby within the hour. And she was dead in another hour."

"Did she say anything before she died? Anything about the boy's father, for instance?'

"Now, as it happens, she did. I remember she said to me 'I hope he looks like his papa,' and I won't lie, she was right to hope it, because she was no beauty- and then she told me he was to be named Tom, for his father, and Marvolo for HER father- yes, I know, funny name, isn't it? We wondered whether she came from a circus- and she said the boy's surname was to be Riddle. And she died soon after that without another word."

There was a silence until Mrs. Cole began again.

"Well, we named him just as she had said, it seemed so important to the poor girl, but no Tom nor Marvolo nor any kind of Riddle ever came looking for him, nor any family at all, so he stayed in the orphanage and he's been here ever since. He's a funny boy."

"Yes, I thought he might be," murmured Dumbledore.

"He was a funny baby too. He hardly ever cried, you know. And then, when he got a little older, he was…odd."

"Odd in what way?"

"Well he- He's definitely got a place at your school, you say?"

"Definitely."

"And nothing I can say can change that?"

"Nothing."

"You'll be taking him away, whatever?"

"Whatever," Dumbledore finished.

After a longer pause, she leaned in and in a hushed voice she confided

"He scares the other children."

"You mean he is a bully?" asked Dumbledore.

"I think he must be," said Mrs. Cole. "But it's very hard to catch him at it. There have been incidents… Nasty things…,"

She gulped more of the alcoholic beverage then started

"Billy Stubb's rabbit… well, Tom SAID he didn't do it and I don't see how he could have done, but even so,"

Billy Stubbs walked angrily back to his room.

That damn Riddle, he thought in his mind. At least I still have Robert.

Billy walked inside to see Robert's cage door wide open.

"Robert?" asked Billy fearfully, thinking Tom might have done something with him. "Where are you boy?"

He walked around his room, expecting to see Robert's cute little nose sniffing for a carrot or something. Billy looked out of the window and screamed

"NO!"

The rabbit was dangling by its neck on the rafters, dead as a doornail.

"…but even so, it didn't hang itself from the rafters, did it?"

"I shouldn't think so, no," agreed Dumbledore.

"But I'm jiggered if I know how he got up there to do it. All I know is he and Billy had a row the day before. And then- on the summer outing- we take them out, you know, once a year, to the country side or the seaside- well, Amy Benson and Dennis Biship were never quite the same afterwards-,"

Young Dennis sat next to Amy, a girl with long brown hair and beautiful blue eyes. They began to talk before they heard the voice of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

"Oi! Dennis, Amy, over here!"

The two children looked over to see Tom starting to climb down the mountain with an eager expression on his pale, but handsome, face.

"Come on down here! You have GOT to see this!"
It was unnerving. Tom NEVER spoke as if he had found something funny or interesting that children would enjoy.

The two curious kids walked over to the mountain side.

"Follow me!" Tom said as he descended more towards a cave opening.

"No! It's a really long fall! I'll get vertigo and then dizzy and I'll let go!" Amy protested.

"Yeah Tom, let's head back to the group," Dennis agreed, slightly lightheaded from staring down at the blue waves crashing onto the jagged, grey rocks.

Tom's eyes narrowed, he looked straight into their eyes. There was something about the way he looked at them, something that made it seem like he was in their head.

"You WILL come with me," he said to them.

The two children, not knowing what they were really doing, nodded and began to climb down the mountain side.

Their legs began to quiver violently as the adrenalin surged through their bodies. Their breathing intensified, but Tom seemed to slip down the mountain as if he had done this many times which they knew he couldn't have. The orphanage had never been to this part of the sea side before.

Once they were finally at the bottom, Tom looked up and down at the cave's entrance.

He then turned to the others.

"You will follow me," he ordered them.

They continued to walk in his wake, not entirely sure why they were obliging to this crazed boy.

They walked inside and Tom smiled as he felt the air.

"It is beautiful, isn't it?" he asked them.

Amy began to whimper.

Tom turned back on them.

"You were never very nice to me Dennis," he told. "I'm afraid you've put her in danger by doing that."

"What the hell are you talking about Riddle?" the frightened Dennis asked Tom.

Tom sneered, and then laughed.

His eyes were fixed on Amy. Tom seemed to be concentrating with all of his might.

He began to mutter as Amy started to scream with agony.

"AMY! Amy! Please, what's wrong? Is it HIM? Tom, STOP HURTING HER!"

She continued to wail before Tom looked away from her and she was silent.

He then looked at Dennis. He repeated the same action to the moaning child who began to wretch, before falling on the ground and vomiting up dark, red blood.

Dennis began to scream, his hands groping around worthlessly, right into the blood pool.

Tom laughed a high, cold laugh that didn't suit his handsome fetchers.

Then both Amy and Dennis were screaming and writhing, unable to call for help, for who would hear them?

The screams subsided as Tom put his foot on Dennis's throat.

"Tell anyone…and there'll be worse than THAT."

He released them both and, before leading them out, took one look at the wall and back at the blood pool.

"I'll never forget this place, will you?" he laughed.

He picked them up to their feet and forced them back out of the cave.

"- they said they had just gone exploring with Tom," Mrs. Cole told, finishing her story.

After a little more discussing of the child, Dumbledore said that he would like to go and see the boy.

"Yes, well I think you should."

They walked along the darkened hallway before coming to a door that was along side many other bedroom doors.

Mrs. Cole opened it and said

"Tom, you have a visitor."