A Question To The Readers

Summary: The tale of a boy.

(Alternate version in Chapter 2)

Fandom: Harry Potter

Rating: G… for once.

Word Count: 696 (cosmetic change (added middle names) on August 7, 2011, written… May 04, 2011, apparently. Good heavens, I wrote this that long ago?)

Disclaimer: I can't even really claim credit for the idea behind this fanfiction… J.K. Rowling applied her Sledgehammer of Subtle Themes first to this topic, and then fandom ran with it. (As for the traditional disclaimer – I'm sorry, but the only similarity I suspect I have to Rowling on the literary front is that we both read Das Mervin's Hammer of the Sues page. And my only grounds for believing that is that one subplot in Deathly Hallows greatly resembles a massive homage to said page…)

How could anyone ever have thought ill of him?

A polite, charming, wide-eyed boy, so eager for knowledge – and an orphan to boot, how tragic. One of his professors held some sort of irrational prejudice against him, but the others paid the man no mind; if anything, the unfair persecution disposed them even better towards the poor boy.

So often, people blamed him for unpleasant events that he just happened to wander by – as if a child could have caused such things! It was embarrassing, frankly; almost made some Muggleborns' jabs at Wizardingkind regarding a total lack of logic seem true. What was wrong with his classmates? Poor, poor boy. Fortunately for him, such a plucky and curious soul always got to the bottom of such occurrences, and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was innocent. Many felt ashamed for ever suspecting him – and then went right back to doubting him again when the next nasty incident occurred. It made one lose one's faith in human nature, it did.

And what they said about him when he started his study group – why, it was simply absurd. Just because he was using his exceptional talents to help others who were struggling, people started the most absurd rumors about him? No good deed goes unpunished, indeed. A personal army – what a laugh! Anyone who had ever interacted with the boy, rather than letting their envy over his school-celebrity status eat them alive, would testify that he was the most selfless and unambitious soul ever to live. Yes, he wanted to campaign for reform and change the world for the better, but that stemmed from a desire to help others, not feather his own nest. Could a young, idealistic man truly be blamed for excess heroism? It was disgusting how some people let their jealousy and delusions drive them to insane fantasies – it made one wonder what sort of people they truly were, to be frank, to suspect such twisted motives and hidden depravity in even the best of people. A little sick, to be blunt about it.

Their deranged fantasies aside, though, he truly was a man in a million, anyone in their right mind could see that. He collected friends of all sorts, even those whom others had dismissed as lost causes and mocked as permanent outcasts, and earned their permanent loyalty. While other adolescents cried themselves to sleep and sank into despair over such trivialities as relationships and social status, he, who had endured a childhood utterly bereft of friends and family and, throughout his entire life, been called "freak" – even, alas, at Hogwarts, which should have been a thousand times more tolerant, with how the Muggle world would have treated them all – and worse names, retained a zest for life and excited longing for what the future would bring that astonished and ashamed – by their meanness of spirit in comparison – those around him. Ofttimes, a student who tried to express his envy of the young man was shouted down by infuriated witches and wizards alike, who proceeded to lecture him at great length about how miserable a life the boy had lived before his nigh-miraculous rescue by the Wizarding world, and how anything he received now was just a too-rare instance of justice in the world, and how the boy would have traded all his worldly success away in an instant for the family that the complainer so indifferently took for granted.

But despite – or perhaps because of – all the hardship he had endured, he would be great one day, everyone from his classmates to the Sorting Hat whispered; when people saw what he became, they would marvel that he had once been a pale, thin orphan, shivering in his shabby clothing in the cold night air as he got off the train to Hogwarts, brushing his dark hair out of his eyes as he squinted into the night, and not knowing what he was going to, but knowing that it had to be better than what he was leaving behind.

Yes indeed, they would marvel.

Now, a question to the readers:

Was this describing Harry James Potter or Tom Marvolo Riddle?