Human Weakness

Human Weakness

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He had not lived a very long life before he realised that one could only rely on oneself. Placing trust - placing hope on another imperfect, mortal being would end in disappointment, burning cold like a slap in the face. Mrs Cole had never looked him in the eye afterward. He did not know if she remembered entirely - perhaps she saw it as he did; a hand lashing out in a drunken haze and then pain... pain that flowed out of his skin white-hot and seared her. It had hurt him, the first time. But after that... after that he had never been hurt again.

The other children were afraid of him, he knew. He did not care. They were weak and useless - he could hear them crying in the night when the shadows seemed to come alive. He never cried. They had told him, with fond smiles and approving expressions, that he had hardly cried as a baby as though it was something to be proud of; something out of the ordinary. And for the first few years they had kept smiling indulgently as they gave him a little more pudding, or let him sit closer to the fire, and when he asked them questions, they told him the truth.

"Why did my mother die?" he asked one day when the children were out in the yard.

The woman - her name too commonplace to remember - had sighed. "Oh, Tom," she lamented. "You ask the most difficult questions."

He had only sat patiently, waiting for her answer.

She sighed again. "She died soon after giving birth to you," she said reluctantly. "After she told us what you were to be called."

His little face seemed to tauten, his eyes staring unseeingly out at the frigid garden. "She died because of me?"

"No!" the woman cried. "Oh, Tom, no." But after this she faltered. "Your mother was just... she had been through too much - she wasn't strong..." She looked around hopelessly, avoiding his gaze. "She was just too weak..."

He scowled at this and turned away. "I don't ever want to be weak."

She frowned at him, full of concern. "Tom..." she said hesitantly. "It wasn't your fault." He nodded. "She would have... stayed, if she had the choice." She leaned towards him and said gently, "She loved you very, very much."

He turned back sharply and she recoiled. His eyes seemed to burn in his chalk-white face. "Did she?" he asked, his tone flat, his face almost in a snarl.

She realised she was leaning away from him, fear in her eyes. "Everyone has to die, Tom," she breathed, unable to move any closer to him. "It's part of being human."

He did not answer her and he did not speak for a long while after she had fled.

...

The next time he asked her a question, she lied. "When my mother died," he began, "did it hurt?"

She started. "No," she said, too quickly and too forcefully.

He frowned. "Does it hurt for most people?"

She glanced around the room, but they were alone. The children were outside again; he hadn't wanted to go. "I don't know, Tom," she replied desperately.

"Tell me!" he cried, his pale skin tinged rosy pink. She was afraid of him, he realised. It was strangely exciting.

"Not now, Tom," she answered, hurrying towards the door.

"Answer me!" he yelled louder. "Tell me the truth!" He reached out and grabbed at her arm - a shock like an electric current ran through her when his skin brushed hers.

"I don't know, Tom!" she shrieked, eyes wide as she snatched her arm away from his. "It might! Sometimes, for some people, it does!"

"For my mother?" he demanded in ringing tones. She hesitated and he made to grab her arm again. She flinched and, tremulously, she nodded.

"There was... there was nothing we could do for her," she breathed. When he looked away from her, she hurried out the door.

He didn't see her again and when he thought of her, it was of the exhilarating power he had felt at causing her fear.

...

"Where are we going, Tom?" Her voice was trembling from tiredness and worry. They were so far away from the other children. She couldn't even see them when she looked back.

"A little further," he replied. "I want to go explore that cave." He pointed far - too far - into the distance.

"I can't see a cave," said Dennis in a small voice. He looked petrified and exhausted.

Tom smiled. "I saw it from the shore," he replied. "It's only a little way down."

Amy looked apprehensively at the sheer drop to the left of them. "Down?" she asked, her voice almost lost in the harsh sea-wind.

Tom turned to look at her and she trembled. "Don't worry," he said happily. "You'll be safe with me."

They walked on, Amy and Dennis fighting against the winds that buffeted them. They seemed to have been walking all day, and the treat Tom had promised them had been far more tempting back in the village.

All of a sudden, Tom veered left and walked to the very edge of the cliff. Amy and Dennis hung back. Tom stood there for a long while, eyes closed facing the wind. His clothes whipped around his thin body in the strong wind as he spread his arms wide like wings. He teetered dangerously.

Amy shrieked. "No! Tom, you'll fall!" Her eyes were wide as saucers.

He looked back at her and smiled. His face seemed livid. Tauntingly, he readied himself as if to jump.

"NO!" she screamed frantically. "Don't do it, Tom! You'll DIE!"

He laughed and the sound made them shiver more violently than they had in the icy wind. He swivelled sharply and walked back to them, appearing to loom larger with each step. "I can't die!" he yelled above the crash of the waves. And he seized them both rapidly and dragged them over the edge.

Her heart seemed to stop. The wind was roaring in her ears, louder than anything she'd ever heard. She saw Dennis, his mouth frozen open in a horrified scream. They were falling all too fast and all too slow. Her hair flew around her face, getting in her eyes and mouth, and she was choking on screams. She had never wanted to be further away from Tom but she clung to him desperately, and through the madness in her mind she heard herself shrieking, "Don't let go, Tom, don't let me go!"

In a split second she saw his face contort into a malicious, manic smile and she was really falling, spinning in all directions and screaming and crying and then she was being drawn up like a yoyo and her arm was back in his vice-like grip. She couldn't breathe. She heard him laughing.

They landed with a smack on a large rock. Dennis appeared to be in shock, his mouth still frozen in a wordless scream. Tom dropped them unceremoniously and dusted off his hands. "I told you it was only a little further. Let's explore."

...

After a while, none of the children would talk to him. When he turned ten, Mrs Cole moved him into his own room. He rarely left it. It was his. He had never really had anything of his own, before. The adults had stopped smiling at him and giving him treats. They'd given Billy Stubbs a rabbit a few years ago. It had been a tiny thing, soft and brown. Billy had been over the moon, acting as though he were the most important boy in the world. And he'd never let Tom touch it.

It had been a tiny thing. Soft, furry, brown... and so obedient.

He didn't need them. He didn't want them. They were pitiful, playing with their toys and crying if they fell over and grazed their knees.

He never cried. He didn't care about pain.

He wasn't weak.

He turned the page. He read very fast; he was almost finished the meagre orphanage library. He'd overheard the schoolmaster telling Mrs Cole to put him down for a scholarship and his heart had leapt. But then... she had shaken her head. It wouldn't be appropriate. Those were her words. He turned the next page ferociously, seething with hatred.

There was a knock and the door opened. "Tom? You've got a visitor."

He looked up to see a slightly unsteady Mrs Cole and a tall man with a long red beard. He walked in the door and held out his hand. "How do you do, Tom? I am Professor Dumbledore."