Note: This chapter was relatively difficult to write. It's one of the few incidents where we have canon to go on. I tried to be as true to canon as possible.
Thanks to my beta rambkowalczyk and to you, for reading and reviewing!
Chapter Nineteen : Transfigurations
London
Summer of 1944
It was the fifth summer of war in London. In the summer of 1940, the Muggles had proved for once and all that they were just as powerful as wizards when it came to violence and destruction. In the beginning, the Germans dropped their bombs on the centres of Muggle industry and on strategic buildings, but soon they started to attack civilian areas as well. For a whole year, bombs dropped on London every night, and whole blocks of houses were reduced to smoking piles of rubble and brick dust by storms of fire. People were killed; people were made homeless and almost everyone seemed to be traumatised in some way.
Tom had been lucky, having spent the time from September 1940 until May 1941, when the bombings were the worst, at Hogwarts, far away from the horrors of these nights. But every summer he returned to the orphanage and was confronted with the war. The number of orphans had increased and so had the poverty. Every room was crammed full of people sleeping on makeshift beds, the food was scarce and the work hard. The Muggle men had gone to war, and left their women and children to deal with the destruction at home.
Tom learned what mortal fear was like when they had to run through the night, with the streets ablaze with fire to reach a bomb shelter. But on the mornings after, when he saw the smoking ruins of Muggle houses, he decided that one day he wanted to be the cause of such destruction rather than being on the receiving end.
In the summer of 1944, he returned to Stockwell to fetch a few papers vowing never to return again. At seventeen, he was finally of age in the wizarding world. The short walk out of the building into the street was the happiest moment he could remember. The ground under his feet became soft as clouds; his every step was the step of a king. Free, free, free, his mind sang.
And what a freedom it was. He was poor as a church mouse. He had saved very little money in the last few years because there was never enough left to save. The few galleons that he possessed had come from selling the more or less worthy things he had found in the Chamber of Secrets: parchments with ancient texts, age-old receipts of long-forgotten potions, and a few minor jewels. It was hard to sell these things without raising suspicion, especially for a seventeen-year-old boy. He would have bullied his schoolmates into giving him money, had he not been too proud to admit that he had none.
The next problem was to find a flat. More than a million houses in Muggle London had been destroyed and it seemed as if every flat was either bursting with tenants or was unaffordable. The same went for the flats in wizarding London: every wizard who could afford it had fled to those areas, like Diagon Alley, that were protected by powerful spells. But now, all the flats there were occupied. The choice was to either take a very desolate flat in Muggle London or to sleep out on the street. Leaving London was not an option for him. In a smaller and less troubled city Muggles would have started to ask questions. Even in London girls questioned him and called him a coward for not fighting in the war, as they did with all young men who stayed at home. London, with its masses of inhabitants and all the problems of war provided just the kind of anonymity Tom wanted and needed.
But after two days of searching for a flat, Tom was at the verge of giving up. He hadn’t slept at all, and was tired to the bones, dusty, dirty and sweaty. He only wanted to find some kind of shelter, no matter how run-down it might be. His odyssey had led him to the Docks, the part of London which was almost completely devastated. Piles upon piles of bricks, shards of shattered windows, splintered wooden beams, everything just lay there among the skeletons of houses. Like the ruins of a desert city it spread in the afternoon sun. Only a few of the industrial buildings were still standing and none seemed to have been in use.
Why not just take one of these, make it Unplottable and rebuild it by magic? It would take the Muggles years to rebuild these parts of their ruined city. Here he could live in relative peace all summer long and it would not cost him a sickle. Tom decided that this was best.
It didn’t take long to find a place that had once been the office of some kind of company, standing next to a bombed warehouse. All the huge windows were broken and the walls charred by past fires, but it would suffice.
Making it completely Unplottable would take a few days, but a simple Muggle repelling charm would do for starters. All this was magic he had taught himself at Hogwarts in preparation for this summer, and now it came in handy. Once he stood inside his new ‘house’ and knew that it was his and his alone, all the exhaustion of two days spent wandering the city fell off him. For the first time in his life he would have a room of his own, he would buy his own food, would clean up when he wanted to and would go to sleep when he chose to. All these were trivial things, but they made him feel giddy and all-powerful.
He started by cleaning the rooms of shards and dust on the first floor and then he transfigured bricks into carpets and splintered desks into a new table and a bed. This was work for house-elves and Tom had sworn to himself never to do such low work again after he left the orphanage, but in that moment he didn’t care much. It was nice to have such power over his environment, to arrange the rooms in a way he liked.
When the frame of the bed was ready, the only things that remained in the barren rooms to make sheets and a mattress from were dust and ashes and a few scraps of paper. It took Tom two attempts to get it right, but the fabric remained grey and felt strange under his touch. Even though he had made cloth out of dirt, the cloth was in essence still what it had been made from.
He conjured a simple meal, and sitting on his first own bed in his first own room, he ate in the middle of the night and maybe for the first time in his life he felt nothing but contentment. Looking at this room he thought: this house has been built by Muggles. I should be appalled by it. But I’m not. It doesn’t matter who built it. It’s a house and it is mine.
Wondering about that he fell asleep and slept dreamlessly all through the night and until the next evening. He woke to the sounds of the nearby port and stared at the ceiling for some seconds. He was alone, completely alone, and realised that he had never been alone for so long. There had always been other children around him and nurses and teachers, always too little space and too little privacy. Finally, the oppressing closeness of people was taken away from him.
The next day he spent looking for more furniture and buying real food and stuff like candles and potions ingredients. He also spent some money on a small dark eagle-owl in Diagon Alley. He had never possessed one of his own, as it was impossible to have one at the orphanage. Now, he would be able to keep up the correspondence with the secret society of the Knights of Walpurgis during the summer. The owl perched on the table, blinking imperiously at the room with its still empty shelves and odd furniture, and its new owner in his dusty school robes. It was warm in the night in June, and from the distance the sounds of the Docks and the buzzing of crickets could be heard.
Once more Tom thought that it was strange that he didn’t hate this Muggle-built home and the sounds of Muggle ships in the distance. For a long time he had thought that he hated all things Muggle but that was not true. About some he didn’t care and some could even be good, like this place.
Finally, Tom found time to look at the small folder of documents that he had fetched at the orphanage. It wasn’t much. The most interesting was probably a couple of documents from Bethlehem Hospital, the institution where his mother had spent the last few months of her life and where Tom had lived for the first three years of his life. He didn’t remember that time, and that was probably a good thing. Growing up in a hospital for the insane was not the kind of thing he wanted to remember.
He finally learned his mother’s name. For a moment he started at it, black on white on the paper. Wendy. A plain, simple name. A name for a little girl, sweet and meaningless. He could not imagine what she had been like.
But then everything changed. The slow, comfortable pace of his life halted and quickened at once, and the warmth of the summer turned into a grey chill. It all started with a little document that told him where his father lived. There, among the thin, worn-out documents, he had found his father’s address.
It was as if he were a person who had lived with a fatal illness for a long time. Until now he hadn’t known who had infected him with that illness, but suddenly he learned that person’s name and address and he knew that this person was not only alive, but healthy and rich and probably happy. He would never get rid of his illness and felt that the person who had infected him did not deserve such happiness. It was too late, he could not get rid of this illness anymore, but he still wanted to erase this person.
Later in his life he would always remember this night as a succession of very clear images and periods of madness. Like a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly, he had to destroy the caterpillar first, had to go through a painful stage of chrysalis before he could attain such colourful wings.
++++
The night was noisy and lively in the countryside, full of little summer sounds of unknown significance: the song of a nightingale, coming sad and sickly sweet from the yews, the crickets and the breeze in the wheat fields, and the faint and distant rumble of noises from the village.
Tom had been standing frozen in front of the gloomy manor for a long while. A whole life passed in front of his eyes, the life of a boy who had never existed. He would have played under those neatly cut rose bushes. He would have sat behind those windows, eating with silver spoons. He would have worn a small black suit every Sunday parading it in the church on the foot of the hill. And he wanted to rip this unreal figment of imagination apart, simply for the reason that it might have existed. He could not deny that he wanted to have lived that life and was appalled by his own desires.
Finally, he strode up the gravel road to the entrance. He didn’t quite know what he wanted here. He had acted on impulse; he had Apparated to the village without a plan. What did he want from his father’s family? He hated them already, without even knowing them. But still he was driven by something. Maybe it was just curiosity, some morbid desire to know why his mother had to die. How did she end up in a hospital for the insane?
He considered the heavy door for a second and then he simply knocked. He heard the sound of voices, a chair moving and then steps.
“Who’s there?” an irritated voice asked without opening the door. It was very impolite, but Tom didn’t care. He simply answered.
“Tom Riddle.”
The door ripped open with a sudden force and a man stared angrily down at him.
“Get away from here you bloody brats! Do you think I’m stupid? I am Tom Riddle!”
Only then he realized that Tom was not only alone, but also not a boy from the village. Tom was wearing a wizarding cloak, despite the warm night. The man was taller than Tom and a bit heavier built, but their features and hair were similar to each other. Tom realized that he was probably talking to his father. He stared numbly at the man in the door.
“I’m your son,” he said in a dead voice.
The Muggle recoiled, stepping back into the hall. Light illuminated his face and Tom could see that there were purplish shadows under his grey eyes, and his features were sallow and sagging.
“I have no son,” the man stammered after a second. But Tom ignored him, closing the distance between them until he was also standing in the light of the hall. His father’s eyes widened with recognition.
“Good Lord,” he whispered. “You’re Wendy’s child.”
Tom assessed their surroundings. They were standing in the hall of a noble mansion, decorated richly but not very nicely. There were electric lights, and a staircase leading to the upper floor. From a door to his father’s right, he heard voices. Tom Sr. was still staring speechlessly at him.
“Who’s in there?” Tom asked.
“Nobody. People. Why “ why don’t we go upstairs for a moment? I “ I’ll give you money. You want money, right?”
“I don’t care for your money. Are these your parents?” Tom stared at his father for a second. Sometimes he could read minds, and almost always he knew if someone was lying. The man shook his head and Tom knew it was a lie. Everything was a lie.
“Introduce me to them,” he demanded. Tom Sr. frowned, straightening himself.
“No, I won’t. You’re very bold for a boy of your age. I’ll give you some money and that’s it.”
“I don’t think so. Imperio!”
His father froze for a second, his features became soft, and he gave a docile nod. Tom had used this curse several times before and found it easier with each time to force his will upon someone.
“Introduce me.”
“I’ll introduce you to my parents...”
Tom Sr. trod into the drawing room and Tom trailed after him. The drawing room was lit by candles in several silver candlesticks and by a fire in a marble grate. There were bookshelves, Persian rugs, old, claw-footed sofas and an armchair. In the armchair, an old man was sitting and smoking a pipe. The man had haughty, heavily lined features and was bent by age. He was still wearing his dinner things. Next to him sat an old lady. Her hair was white and her face pale from age. She had watery blue eyes and she looked sick and a little confused.
Tom Sr. stopped in the middle of the room. “Mother, Father, this is my son,” he said in a slack voice. Then he fell quiet, numbed by the Imperius Curse.
The old lady blinked at them and the pipe-smoking man started to cough. “What “ what is this?” he rasped. “Your son? You have no son!”
He looked furious and his wife was even more confused than before. Tom found them very disappointing. There was nothing interesting, nor appealing about them. They were just rich, snobby Muggles.
“This is Wendy’s son,” Tom Sr. repeated. This time his voice sounded strained, as if he was fighting against the curse.
“Wendy?” the old lady asked with wonder in her voice. She seemed to be senile.
“That whore from the village? The woman you got with child? That “ that little bastard is her offspring? I thought they’d get rid of that thing in that institution!” Tom’s grandfather barked.
Tom felt his fingers around his wand twitch involuntarily. Two forces were fighting inside him: the urge to hurt and the urge to run away and close his ears.
“My mother was a witch, you filthy scum,” he muttered to himself.
“A witch!” Tom Sr. exclaimed nervously. Tom was no longer using the Imperius Curse. “Your mother was no witch, boy. She was only a confused girl. A loony. Told everyone she was a witch, but when she was asked to do magic, she told me her wand had been snapped by her family because she had married me! Ha! She clearly was insane, any family would have been glad to have her married to me, I’m a Riddle and she was just a village girl, you see ““ the man ranted on, but Tom wasn’t listening anymore.
He had wanted to kill before. Or at least he had thought so. He had wanted to kill the bullies in the orphanage and Dumbledore when he interfered with his plans. But that feeling had been nothing compared with what he felt now. He was going mad and blind with hatred. And he wasn’t even sure who he hated: his father or his grandfather or his mother or himself...
“Avada Kedavra!” he yelled suddenly. A flash of green and his father dropped to the floor like a heavy doll. And something inside Tom seemed to drop away with his father’s fall.
The old man made an indignant, shocked noise and the old woman gasped. Tom whirled around. Now everything happened with great ease.
“Avada Kedavra!” he shouted once more and this time he relished the powerful surge of magic. His grandfather slumped in the armchair, dead. The pipe dropped to the floor and rolled under the table. The sound was followed by a sudden silence.
Tom and the old lady stared at each other; one frozen by his own power, one by sheer fright. The seconds ticked by. Tom cooled down a little bit. But she was still staring at him. She knew his name, and had seen him kill the two men. He pointed his wand at her. She blinked. Maybe she didn’t understand what had happened to her husband and son.
He could have Obliviated her, but he didn’t.
“Avada Kedavra.”
After that, the silence returned. Tom was seeing the scene, but he was not Tom. He was uninvolved, a bystander, a watcher, his own shadow. He saw himself, wand still raised, and three dead bodies, killed by fear itself. Time had stopped.
Somehow Tom left the house, as if walking in a dreamscape. He was going through the motions like a machine. He felt completely empty.
His father had been a pathetic creature, but he didn’t care. His mother had fallen in love with such a man, but he didn’t care. She had been just as pathetic as him, and Tom should have been angry at her. All his life he had seen her as the victim, just like he had seen himself as the victim. But that was over now. He would forget her.
She was part of Tom Riddle, and Tom Riddle had been left behind in that house or somewhere in the crowded corridors of the orphanage.
He wasn’t Tom Riddle anymore, he could feel it. This body was only a vessel for that power which he would someday become. He felt detached from Tom; as if Tom were a person he had once known very well but was now rapidly forgetting.
He walked miles like this, in the darkness of the night, carried by these powerful thoughts.
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The next morning he woke in his London flat, spread-eagled on his bed. He felt cold and sticky, and the sheets were tangled around him like a firm cocoon. The sun was shining in through the broken windows and for some time he thought it had all been a dream. It felt all so remote now. But when he sat up, he could see the documents lying everywhere on the floor of the huge, half-empty room, and his boots which were still dirty from walking through the fields.
Knowing that it had not been a dream, Tom examined his feelings once more. The Riddles were dead now, and so was his mother. Like the molten snow of past winters, they had had left no traces in the landscape of his mind. The sense of freedom returned, even stronger than before, freedom as sharp as a razorblade cutting the ties to his past.
This was the path he wanted to take, he decided while sitting half-naked on his bed, in the middle of this destroyed city; reborn in his own smouldering pile of ashes. From now on he would systematically erase everything that was a part of his past.
He knew the answer to his question now. The Muggle houses and Muggle ships didn’t make him angry because they didn’t concern him. They didn’t remind him of what he had been, and that was why he didn’t hate them. But every Half-blood and Mudblood and Muggle on the face of this earth was like a mirror of his past. He would shatter them.
From now on, everything he did would serve this one purpose. He would no longer be content with childish games. He would erase the traces of his heritage, he would change his name and identity, and he would become powerful where he had been weak, free where he had been confined, immortal where he had been mortal and imperfect.
And even then he would not rest. When he had changed himself, he would go on changing this world, making it a perfect place to live in for the perfect man he would become.