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Great and Terrible Things	By : TheRiddleHouse Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 2975 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I make no money from writing this fanfiction.

Chapter List
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CHAPTER TWO
Forget-me-nots

1937

“You can’t read?” Tom asked.
He’d caught her with her picture book from home (Caterpillar Joe), admiring the metamorphosis of Joe into a butterfly on page 12. Adriana snapped the book closed and said, “Course I can read, you idiot.”
“Then why’ve you got a baby’s book?” he asked, smirking.
“I like it,” she said, and this was true enough. Caterpillar Joe was one of the only books Mother had permitted her to own, and Adriana always liked the bright colors, if not so much the large, childish words on the pages.
“Right,” Tom said, skeptical. “Anyway, I want to show you something. Come on.”
He had a way about him that demanded both attention and obedience, but Adriana was done following anyone else’s commands. So she said, “No,” mostly to spite him, and returned to her picture book.
Tom plucked Caterpillar Joe out of her hands, frowning, and said, “Don’t ignore me,” in an imperious voice that ought to have sounded ridiculous coming from a ten-year-old, but which oddly didn’t.
Adriana snatched the book back, although any desire to read it had been effectively extinguished. “What is it you want to show me?”
“You’ll see.” He took her by the arm and pulled her to her feet. If it had been anyone besides Tom who laid his hands on her, she’d have used her power to throw them backward. “This better be good,” she said.
He led her outside, to the courtyard, which was empty of children this early in the morning. It was unseasonably cool, and dew still glimmered on the grass under the wan sunlight. Tom finally stopped and let go of her once they reached the east corner of the building, where he knelt and began looking closely at the ground. What he possibly hoped to find, she couldn’t imagine, but then he opened his mouth and hissed. He made the sounds with the same certainty with which he spoke English, as if he was fluent in a strange, sibilant language.
A garden snake slithered out of the grass and into Tom’s outstretched hand. It hissed back at him, and although Adriana couldn’t understand a word of it, she knew they were having a conversation.
Tom smiled a wild, brilliant smile that somehow made his finely carved features appear less perfect than usual, his dark eyes gleaming a deep reddish-brown rather than their typical black. “This is Nag,” he said to her.
“You can talk to snakes?” Adriana asked.
Tom nodded, no longer smiling, more solemn now.
Perhaps she should have found this revelation intimidating, even scary, but she didn’t.
“Can you understand him too?” Tom asked. He sounded both hopeful and wary, and she could guess that he was torn, half wanting to share this ability with her, half desiring to be singular, special.
“No,” Adriana said. “Sounds like gibberish to me.” Even so, she reached out and petted Nag, sliding her first two fingers down his scaled back, from the top of his head to the tip of his tail. “He’s a cute little fellow,” she admitted.
Nag hissed softly, and she didn’t need Tom to translate to know that the snake liked her.
Still, Tom spoke to Nag, maybe asking a question, but Adriana would never find out what it was he said.
“What’s all this?” Billy Stubbs was a short, husky boy who ran around with Dennis, and like the rest of their group, he hated Tom. Now he looked on both of them as if they were crazy.
Tom let go of Nag, but not quickly enough. Billy stepped on the snake, snuffing out its life with one cruel stomp.
Tom looked at Billy, and there was such heat behind his glare that Adriana was surprised the older boy didn’t recoil.
“You was talking to that snake,” Billy accused.
Tom stood up. “So what if I was?”
“You’re a freak,” Billy said, “just like your circus-freak mum.”
“At least my mother wasn’t a tramp like yours,” Tom said.
Adriana hadn’t the slightest idea whether or not Billy’s mother was truly a whore. Regardless, he charged at Tom and pushed him backward. It might have come to blows, but Martha stepped outside and shouted, “Hey! Stop it!”
She strode over, grabbed both of them by their arms, and said, “We’re going to Mrs. Cole.”
Adriana watched them leave. Then she turned back to the body of Nag, scooped him up in her hand, and dug a small hole along the base of the building. Dirt got under her fingernails, but she didn’t mind. She laid the garden snake to rest, covered him with newly turned earth. Adriana tapped the ground, and a sprig of blue forget-me-nots sprung up in the wake of her touch, because everyone deserved flowers on their grave.

Billy owned a rabbit, a fluffy brown rodent with white patches and a twitchy nose that never stopped sniffing. Where he’d gotten it, Tom didn’t know, nor why Mrs. Cole had allowed him to keep a pet, as she seemed to hate most animals on principle. Billy doted on that rabbit, always feeding it whatever fresh vegetables he could sneak from the kitchen and carrying it around the orphanage like a proud mother with a fat infant. It had some ridiculous name from Through the Looking-Glass, Tweedledee or Tweedledum, Tom couldn’t remember which and hardly cared. What it was called didn’t much matter, anyhow; it would be dead soon enough.
He stole a length of rope from the ground floor closet and waited until recess to sneak up to Room 38, where Billy kept his pet in a wood and chicken-wire hutch. Tom opened the cage, grasped the rabbit around its middle, and pulled it out. The creature kicked with surprising force for an animal no heavier than three pounds, and Tom held it close to his chest. It buried its face in the crook of his arm, panting and trembling, and he felt a sudden lurch of doubt. It was not the rabbit, after all, who had killed Nag. But nothing would hurt Billy as much as depriving him of his precious pet, so Tom went downstairs to the refectory, which he knew would be deserted in the lull between lunch and dinner.
All he had to do was will it, and the rope circled itself around the rabbit’s throat like a hemp collar. A moment later the creature was strung up from the rafters by its neck, dangling limp and lifeless.
Tom hurried back to his room, heart pounding. He intended to hide there, alone, but when he opened the door he found Adriana sitting on his bed, playing with his yo-yo.
“That belongs to me,” he said.
She shrugged. “I heard it was Norman’s.”
“Well, it’s mine now, and I didn’t say you could play with it,” Tom snapped. “You’re always coming into my room without asking and touching my stuff.”
Adriana frowned and asked, “What’s got you all bothered?”
He thought of the rabbit hanging from the rafters, and he wondered briefly whether he might have the power to bring a dead thing back to life.
“Nothing,” Tom lied.
“Then stop being an arse,” she said.
They practiced levitating small objects across the room until dinner time, and then he and Adriana headed downstairs. He didn’t want to have to look at the rabbit again, but he was eager to see Billy’s reaction. Tom wondered if the other boy would cry.
He didn’t have to wait long to find out. Mrs. Cole was ushering children out of the refectory, and as he passed by, Tom heard her mutter, “Don’t know how we’re going to get the poor thing down…” Martha had an arm wrapped around Billy’s shoulders. He was sobbing noisily, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Tears streaked his blotchy cheeks and snot dripped from his piggish nose. He deserves it, Tom thought. He killed Nag.
“What did you do?” Adriana whispered.
“Nothing,” Tom said, and it wasn’t difficult at all to sound indignant.
Just then, Billy looked up, and he pointed at Tom. “I know you’re the one that done it, Riddle!”
Martha shushed him and rubbed slow circles on his back. “Tom couldn’t have, Billy. Think about it. How would he have gotten up there?”
“I—I dunno,” Billy said, “but he did it! Mrs. Cole, you’re gonna punish him, aren’t you?”
Mrs. Cole looked at Tom like she’d very much like to beat him, but she shook her head. “There’s no way to know how it happened, Billy. Go on to your room, and I’ll have someone bring you up some supper.”
Once he was out of sight, Mrs. Cole took Tom by the arm and half-dragged him into her office. “Sit,” she said curtly, so Tom sat in the chair before her cluttered desk. He’d been inside this room many times before, and it seemed to grow shabbier with each visit, the carpet patchier, the mismatched furniture more threadbare.
Mrs. Cole didn’t bother dissembling. It wasn’t her way. “You killed that rabbit, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tom said, and he was careful to keep his voice innocent, puzzled.
“Of course you don’t,” she said. “But let me make this clear to you, Tom: that sort of behavior isn’t right in the head, and if I ever catch you doing something like this again, I won’t hesitate to have you looked at. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Tom wasn’t scared of doctors, but he didn’t fancy the idea of being examined. Much as he hated the orphanage, he was certain an asylum would be far worse.
“You can go,” Mrs. Cole said. “And try not to cause any more trouble.”

Tom jerked awake, overwhelmed by the suffocating sensation of weight on his chest. He felt a surge of fury when he realized someone was on top of him, holding him down and covering his mouth.
“You think it’s funny, hurting things smaller than you?” Dennis asked. “Let’s see how you like it, Riddle.”
Tom tried to push Dennis off, but the bigger boy was strong and thickly built, and it was useless. Before he could concentrate and use his power, Dennis punched him in the stomach, right below the ribs, and the pain of it was enough to knock the wind out of him. Tom coughed, wheezed, and tried to suck in a breath. He couldn’t, though, because Dennis’ other hand was still firmly clasped over his mouth, smothering him. He might have panicked, but he was too angry to be frightened, and without focusing, without even trying, Dennis was vaulted backward, as if some invisible hand had thrown him.
Tom breathed deeply, filling his lungs with sweet air, once, twice, again, until he no longer felt like he was drowning. Then he stood and walked over to Dennis. The other boy scrambled away, and his eyes were wide and white with fear. “How—how’d you do that?” he asked, and Tom had never heard him sound half so scared.
Dennis had tried to beat him and would have done if Tom hadn’t been able to stop it. I ought to hurt him. Hurt him till he wants to scream, except I’ll shut his mouth so he can’t.
The door opened, and Amy Benson, who’d apparently been keeping a lookout, stuck her pinched face inside to say, “Martha’s coming, Dennis, you’d better—Dennis, what happened?”
He stood on shaking legs, threw Tom a petrified look, said, “You stay away from me, Riddle!” and hurried from the room.
Tom went back to bed, but he couldn’t sleep. Anger and satisfaction were thrumming through his veins in equal measure, and he was drunk on the fear he’d seen in Dennis’ eyes. If Amy hadn’t opened that door he might have taught his biggest bully a lesson, and he was disappointed that the opportunity escaped him.
He got up, left his room, and walked down the hall to number 29. Adriana was asleep, but she woke quickly enough when Tom said her name. She propped herself up on an elbow, rubbed her bleary eyes, and asked, “What do you want?”
“Dennis just tried to beat me,” he said, without preamble.
“What?” She sat up straighter, alert and concerned. “Are you all right?”
Tom sat on the edge of her bed, and when he held his hands out in front of him he saw more than felt that they were trembling. “I’m fine.” He told Adriana everything that had happened, and then he said, “I’m gonna get them back, both of them, for trying to hurt me.”
Adriana did not attempt to talk him out of it. This was one of the things Tom liked best about her, that she seemed to know who he was and didn’t care to change him. “What are you going to do to them?” she asked.
“I dunno yet,” he said, “but when I’m done they’ll never bother me again.”
Tom looked at her, at her pale face, white under the moonlight streaming in through the open window. Her cheeks had grown fuller in the months since she’d come to Wool’s, and although she was still rather thin, he could see now that Adriana was actually quite pretty. Not for the first time, he wondered who had mistreated her. Who had left her on an orphanage doorstep starved and bruised and welted. If someone did that to me, I’d kill them.
“Will you help me?” Tom asked.
Adriana was quiet for a long moment, so long that he expected her to refuse. But then she met his eyes and said, “Yeah, all right. I’ll help you.”

She didn’t expect Tom to waste time taking his revenge. He had, after all, retaliated against Billy Stubbs swiftly enough. Although he denied laying a finger on that rabbit, Adriana didn’t believe him for a second. Tom was as dishonest as he was spiteful, and he would hesitate neither to kill Billy’s pet nor to lie about it. To her surprise, though, the days passed uneventfully enough, and he seemed in no hurry to get back at Dennis and Amy.
As June waxed into July the orphans started talking about a summer outing, and Adriana grew curious enough to ask Tom what he knew. They were sitting in the attic, playing five card draw, betting with pennies Tom had stolen from Eric Whalley.
“Mrs. Cole takes us somewhere new every August,” he said. “Last couple years it’s been trips to the country, but we went to the beach once.”
She frowned and asked, “How long have you been here?
“All my life,” Tom said dully. He shuffled the deck without touching it, then dealt the next hand. “My mother died giving birth to me at this orphanage. But I guess she hadn’t planned to keep me even if she’d lived.”
That was very sad, although Adriana supposed every orphan at Wool’s had their own unfortunate story. Whatever differences separated them, they were all abandoned or left behind by someone.
Her cards were a mismatched mess with only an ace of hearts to commend them, so she checked Tom’s bet of three pennies and discarded a deuce of clubs and six of diamonds.
“What about you?” he asked. “How’d you get here?”
Over years, then over night, she could have said.
(Adriana tried not to think of the bad thing she’d done. Or that it had amazed her, how still a dead body could be. How perfectly, precisely motionless.)
“Same way everybody gets here,” she said shortly.
Tom scowled and dealt her two new cards. A six of spades and deuce of diamonds. Naturally. “You don’t got to be smart about it,” he said. “I told you where I came from.”
“You didn’t come from anywhere,” Adriana said, which was true, if unkind. “Not the same.”
“What, you think you’re better than me?” Tom asked, and his voice took on a sharp tone.
“Of course not,” she said.
He drew another card and smiled in that self-satisfied way that made her want to slap him. “I bet five.”
Adriana didn’t especially feel like donating five more pennies to Tom Riddle. “Fold.”
They played another hand, and as she dealt, he asked, deceptively casual, “Did your father beat you?”
She froze, felt a flush of anger and embarrassment heating her cheeks, because he was a mean and insensitive boy, yes, Adriana knew that, but sometimes the things he said and did still shocked her. “No. Was your mother really from the circus, like Billy said?”
Color rose high on his hollow cheeks, and Tom gave her a hard look, the sort that would have scared Adriana if she’d been much afraid of anything. “How would I know?” he asked coldly.
They didn’t talk much for the rest of the day, nor the next week, but Adriana grew too bored on her own to hold a grudge any longer. Without apologizing or discussing the matter, she simply sat with Tom at dinner one evening and said, “Want to practice in my room?” to which he answered, “Sure,” and that was that.
He did not ask about her past again.
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Great and Terrible Things