Such A Nice Boy

Such a Nice Boy-

He was always such a nice boy.

Sure, Tom Riddle was a little ambitious, Minerva had always noticed that. But even if he was ambitious, she also knew that he had always been incredibly hard working. There was not a moment she remembered that he didn't have a book on him, and there were many evenings she could recall walking into the prefects' common room and finding him buried amongst the pages of some large tome, a feverish look of concentration etched on his face. On these occasions, he did not, could not have possibly noticed anything, let alone the girl who watched him from the doorway silently until she got tired of waiting for him to look up.

Maybe that should have alerted her.

There were students who had devoted their lives to learning, but the word 'devote' probably understated the relationship between Tom and his books. She couldn't understand what it was that drew him to the darkest corners of the library, what it was that he searched for so diligently, cursing under his breath when he thought no one could hear him. She had tried to ask him, once, only to be greeted by a cold stare that was a silent request for her to leave him alone. But she couldn't help but notice the gleam in his eyes as he turned back to the book he had found, a book with the title obscured by the blood that stained its front.

Maybe she should have said something.

Maybe she should have said something on one of those nights when she curled up in her bed and thought of the look on his face as he devoured knowledge, the way his eyes raked across the page, faster and faster, almost as if he was being hypnotized by the old words on parchment. Maybe she should have said something as she walked into the library and found him crouched in a corner, his trembling fingers coated in dust from the book he clutched to his chest and the air around him crackling with old magic she couldn't understand. Maybe she should have said something that time she saw him creeping across the school grounds and into the Forbidden Forest, only returning at dawn, his hair slicked to his face and his skin so pale that it was almost translucent; she fancied she could see the nerves in his eyelids when he fell asleep in class.

But she never said anything about him to anyone.

Tom Riddle had always been as his name proclaimed him; a human riddle, a walking, talking, living, breathing enigma. It was a joke amongst his classmates, a joke he smiled at once when he was in his third year but never had much of a reaction to after that. It was a joke that Minerva never could bring herself to laugh at, instead puzzling over the boy, trying to solve him as if he were a mystery that needed to be pieced together, clue by clue. It was a habit she had, analyzing her fellow classmates, but Tom Riddle always presented a challenge to her by refusing to be analyzed, unable to be classified neatly as clever, witty, bright or brave, nor as stupid, dull, lazy or sullen, a person who was more-or-less a ragtag bundle of opposing parts. She would put his ambition down to his less-than-honorable birth, to his humiliation at the hands of Muggles for the eleven years before he was welcomed back into the world where he belonged; she attributed his love for learning to the fact that he had watched enviously as the other children were bathed and clothed and sent off to school while he was locked in a small cupboard, something she had only found out when she had stolen an old diary of his that chronicled his days at the Muggle orphanage and flipped through it. But she never really understood his brilliance giving way to the occasional flashes of anger that manifested themselves in dangerous incidents of rogue magic, or his fascination with secret spells that she had been afraid to even think of. She had often thought that she was close to understanding him, only to realize that she had missed something in her meticulous examination of this extraordinary boy. There was something about him that never added up, something missing from what he had always presented to the school in himself, something that she could almost, but not quite pin down.

But she never was able to figure it out.

Minerva often thought back to her days at Hogwarts once she was free of it, nostalgic for the old stone walls of the castle and the roaring fires that she would sit in front of, staring into the glowing heat until her eyes hurt as she lost herself in some whirlwind of memory. In the old cottage that belonged to her uncle, she sat herself in an armchair, whiling away the night with the thoughts she was free to dwell on now that she had no more school to distract her. She would recall the laughter of classmates and the nights spent studying for exams, and a boy who sat by himself in the library, a battered old copy of Hogwarts: A History propped up in front of him and dozens of books surrounding him, quills enchanted to underline the name 'Salazar Slytherin' wherever it appeared.

The fire crackled warmly before her, but she felt cold, as she always did when she thought of Tom.

She recalled going up to him one day when he had been busy as such, totally lost in his books, and simply watching from behind a bookcase as he hissed under his breath, jumping as a snake curled itself around her ankles and then went slithering up to him. It had been frightening to see him smile at the snake with all the affection that one might show a favorite cousin or a close friend, and even more so to realize that he was staring straight at her. She had leapt up, rushing from her hiding place and out of the library, unable to forget the glow in his eyes as the snake settled itself around his shoulders. That night she had confronted her findings, shaking her head as she thought of the snake and the strange hiss that had passed from his lips, almost as if he was talking to it. She would not believe it, but when he had appeared in front of her the next morning with a book simply titled The Brotherhood of Parsel and a strange hooded look in his eyes as he pressed it into her shaking hands before hurrying away she knew that her denials were not going to change what she had seen.

But even now, years after, she denied everything she knew about Tom Riddle.

A letter sat on her lap, the parchment lined with creases as if it had been unfolded, read and reread, then folded again, the process repeating itself countless times. The emerald ink still looked fresh, an odd contrast with the state of the parchment, but it was smudged and the hand it was written in was large and loopy, but shaky as if someone had paused as they wrote, the slight thrill of fear in their veins passing through to the quill and onto the letter itself. She shook out the letter as one might shake out a hanky, taking in the words that were printed there and sighing as she went over what she had already read countless times since morning, but still unable to believe what was written in it, the terse message burning itself into her brain.

A new Dark Lord has risen, one who is even more terrible than those before him, merciless and not willing to stop at anything that stands between him and absolute power. I urgently require your assistance. I hope that you may be able to help us in our efforts to trace any information on this Lord Voldemort (as he is known), as I have reason to believe that he is a former classmate of yours.

She stopped herself at this point, staring into the harsh flames that leapt in the fireplace, but unable to feel its warmth, instead only the numbing cold that had settled itself over her like a heavy cloak of reluctant realization.

Minerva, it said, what do you remember about Thomas. M. Riddle?

She took a deep breath as she crumpled the letter in her hand into a tight little ball of parchment, thinking. There was so much she remembered about this boy, so much that she could say, but one event pushed itself to the forefront of her mind, as it had so many times today. She could almost imagine herself back at Hogwarts, slumped against the wall and her eyes prickling with tears, back in her first year when she had been nothing more than a shy little girl with too many questions and too few friends. She remembered the hand on her arm and the voice in her ear, and the face of the boy who stared back at her solemnly as he handed back the books that some older boys had snatched from her. He had glanced down at her torn robes and without saying a word, he had simply waved his wand, screwing up his face in concentration, the rips in her clothes immediately disappearing. He did the same for her bleeding lip, then silently took her hand, and she remembered how small his fingers were, how thin and delicate, but how firm his grip was as he lead her to the Hospital Wing. He had made to leave almost as soon as the nurse appeared, but she had called after him, realizing that while she had seen this boy in her classes and that he was a Slytherin, she did not know his name.

'Tom,' he had whispered, 'Tom Riddle.'

That had been the first and last time he spoke to her. He had never uttered a single word to her after that, sparking off her fascination with this odd boy.

Minerva bit her lip as she stared at the fire, then sighed, reaching for a quill and a piece of parchment from the table. She dipped her quill in ink, then paused, letting it hover over the page, not knowing what to think. She promised herself that she would go to Dumbledore in person tomorrow, and explain what she knew, everything she knew, but tonight, she could not bring herself to say much of anything. Slowly, deliberately, she stroked her chin with the end of the quill, staring at the blank paper before writing a single sentence on it, her black ink shining back at her as it dried.

He was always such a nice boy.

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fin

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