Spoilers : All books including OotP
Characters: Harry, Tom Riddle, Ron and Hermione, Dumbledore, Aberforth Dumbledore, Ollivander, Voldemort, Sirius & pretty much everyone else.
A/N: This was inspired by a number of Theories on Muggle.net and RedHen , as well as the things said by JKR herself. More on that later, when I will disclaim the theories which are not my brainchildren.
This work is almost complete and will have more than 20 chapters.
R&R very much appreciated.
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In Essence Divided
Prologue : Love
Fall 1932 , London
Stark black shadows were thrown on the leaf-littered ground by sunlight and a beech tree. It was October, cold and clam, but with a bright and clear sun in the sky. The leaves were tumbling freely, leaving empty holes in the trees’ crowns and spots and dots of yellow and brown on the muddy ground.
Children were huddling and running noisily on that ground, up to 30 maybe, clad in dirty and worn clothes but never real rags. Some looked wild and underfed and unkempt, like they had been gathered from the streets themselves, while others looked groomed and tidy but still pale and poor, like they had been living in this chilling place for too long but were still trying to keep up a semblance of order.
They were boys and girls. They slept and ate in different wings of the brickstone buildings, but they played and learned together. Their ages ranged from toddlers to children of fourteen and fifteen. There were a few older ones, too, but they were inside now, studying. These children were not all orphans, some still had parents somewhere out there, some stayed here only for a limited time, until their parents could afford to fetch them again. Others had lost their parents in the World War a few years ago and yet other had been abused and neglected in their homes.
A group of the little children had gathered around the dark stem of a tree and a tattered and rusty old swing. The oldest and therefore the leader of them sat in the swing, a grubby-faced child of eight years, wearing a brown cap. At his feet, two boys squatted, carefully avoiding the mud, for they knew the consequences of getting yourself dirty already well for their tender age. Another boy with a shock of red hair stood by the tree, with him his sister in a faded dress.
The last boy was the smallest; he was no older than five, and simply stood in front of them. He had dark hair and eyes, and his face was bathed in the shadow of the tree, but soon the sun would advance and the shadow would travel further east, so that his little face would be illuminated.
“But there are nice nurses,” the little girl just insisted. Her name was Fanny.
“No, there aren’t,” the boy on the swing, named Anthony, replied with the complete arrogance only a child can muster when it talks to a younger child and thinks it knows better.
“There are! Nurse Emily is always nice to me!” the girl stubbornly insisted.
“Most of them are mean,” one of the boys at Anthony’s feet injected lazily.
“No,” Anthony said, fully convinced of himself and his importance. “They all are. Some of them may seem nice, but they aren’t really. They don’t really like us. We’re just orphans. Nobody really loves you.”
“My parents did!” Fanny yelled and stomped on of her small feet on the ground. Her brother nodded slightly in agreement.
The smallest boy just stood there and listened. He hadn’t said a word and wouldn’t do it. He rarely ever did. Now, the sun had reached his face. The cold light of fall blinded him mercilessly.
‘Did my parents love me?’ Tom Riddle asked himself, for the first time in his life.
TBC