Chapter Seven : Among Lords
Hogwarts, September 1938
The witch cried out his name and he knew it was his turn. They had often called all the kids after each other at home in the orphanage, so he was used to it. Was used to prying eyes and staring children, and used to being humiliated in front of a class. And so he walked towards the hat and the chair with his eyes on the ground.
He wasn’t used to enchanted ceilings and floating candles though , but he thought he might come to like them. They were strange, and so was he.
Nobody in the Great Hall was too excited about the small, scrawny, black-haired boy putting on the ragged hat. He was unknown, a muggle-born probably, certainly not the richest if you looked at his dirty shoes.
Tom put on the Sorting Hat and was met with a deafening silence. Then he felt like very small voices were hissing and murmuring fervently, until the voice he had heard singing before rang in his ears.
“Welcome!” it said, much more heartily than expected. “Welcome to Hogwarts, last of our descendants!”
Descendants? Tom knew the word, it meant something like being the child, or the heir of someone. Not something he was. You must be wrong. I’m Tom “
“You’re the Heir of Slytherin. And that is where you will be.”
The “
“Slytherin!” the hat shouted with a booming voice. The students at the table under the green emblem frowned and whispered among each other as Tom approached the table. No one knew a pureblood family named Riddle, not even an ordinary wizard family. Probably he was a halfblood. That was unusual, and even more unusual was the obvious poverty of the first year.
Tom sat next to the other first years. They looked unlike all the children he knew in London, more like little adults, and none of them had the plain, hungry, scared faces you got to meet in an orphanage.
“Where are you from?” a taller, fair-haired first year demanded. The way he pronounced his words was very haughty.
“London.”
“Riddle is your father’s name, I suppose?” Tom tensed. His parents, mostly his mother, were his weak spot, the dark smudge on his self. Would they ask about his mother? Would they somehow find out that she had been a madwoman? But she hadn’t been. She hadn’t. It was all a lie. She had been a witch, and now he was a wizard. All those mean peoples who called her crazy were mere ‘Muggles’. They couldn’t do magic. This was what he clung too as he looked in the scrutinising eyes around him.
“It is,” he answered, staring straight into the grey eyes of that boy. I’m a wizard. You’re a wizard, he pleaded with his mind. “He was a muggle. A “ a bastard. Left my mother. My mother was a witch.”
He had used a bad word, and that impressed all the little upper crust children. Also, he had called a Muggle a bastard, and that was basically what most of their parents did. So he couldn’t be that bad, could he? The fair-haired boy lost his haughty demeanour and a mischievous grin appeared on his face. You could suddenly see that he was handsome.
“That’s it,” he congratulated. “You seem the right sort of guy. My name’s Black. Alphard Black.”
The next Slytherin first year arrived, and they clapped and Tom was one of them, clapping too, an orphan among lords, and he felt as much at home as he had never before.
Note : Alphard Black, as you might or might not remember, is Sirius' uncle, the one who was wiped off the family tree and left him a decent amount of money. His age might be the age of Tom. Sirius was born in 1960. If Mrs Black was, say, 25 at the time, she would be born around 1935. If Alphard is her older brother, he could be around Tom's age.