Stockholm

Stockholm

Geneva has told him to call her Ginny, but-he doesn't know why-he feels he can't. There is a horrible feeling associated with the name, something that causes him to think he had let her down. He doesn't know why; he can't have met her before. He can't remember having ever met anyone before.

Not unless he thinks about it... a man, it was: tall, dark, and ugly. A man that, if he thinks about it, he might have liked to know. He was evil, and the man had been a Nemesis (for Geneva reads myths to him), casting judgment upon him. But he has been spared, hasn't he? Some mercy has been shown towards him and he is here now, with his wonderful Geneva.

He likes to watch her prepare for her days, donning her long black robes and pinning her badge proudly on her chest. There is always some bitterness involved; he knows she is leaving him. He will be here all alone. Solitary by nature, he doesn't think he minds, imagining with pride the magnificent things Geneva is off to do.

That day, Tom is at the little balcony that stems out from their room. He is there only to breathe the air, crisp and stinging, and to dream about how far the wooded horizon extends. His pleasant woolgathering is interrupted rudely by two uncouth gigglers on the ground.

"DISHY!" yells one. Her voice is high and thick with phlegm. He compares it to Geneva's smooth, clear intonations and it comes off unfavourably.

"Come down and give us a kiss, love," yells the other.

Slowly, his wary stare upon them, he retreats backwards into the warm, safe room. Perhaps, he thinks later, when he has had time to get over the shock and forgive the two, they have no room to retreat to. The outside must make anyone harder and coarser; he is afraid of it, relieved that Geneva has not broached the topic of going there.

Thinking is dangerous, yet it is-besides cleaning and bathing-the only amusement available to him. Often he stares up at the ceiling and asks it questions that are out of his simple reach.

"Why does Geneva always carry around a dowel?" he asks of it today. "It seems as if it is important to her, and only her. She says words to it and it does what she says. She has never yet let me touch it. Would it listen to me? Ought I to watch more carefully?"

He pauses, waiting for the words to come back down to him so that he can answer the latter question posed.

"No," he decides. "I should not be watching Geneva. She watches me, do you know? It's true, she does. She is that caring."

Once again, the words echo through the bare room. Thinking with a whimsical smile about the real Echo, he wonders who this makes him. Diana, her mistress? Juno, revenging herself against the nymph, but her unfaithful husband through proxy? Narcissus, the cruel, handsome youth who cared for nothing but his looks and what he could inflict?

He shivers; in pinning down the character of Narcissus he is afraid that it is really himself he is thinking of.

Echo is he, the poor foolish nymph who never meant any harm but played and loved overmuch. Will he waste away? Will his voice call back to the others in warning?

When Geneva comes back to the room, he has formulated a plan to quell his curiosity. She leaves the room to bathe, and he takes the opportunity to touch the stick in the discarded robes he will be expected to wash tomorrow.

A slight thrill goes through him at the feeling of it. Shivering, he says the first thing that comes into mind.

"Avada Ke-"

He breaks off. What can he be thinking of? A mistake, he assures himself, nonsense. He was merely joking.

Trying again, he is determined not to err this time. "Lumos," he whispers.

The stick radiates white light throughout the room, shaking in his hand so that he can hardly hold it. For several seconds he is blinded. This is when Geneva comes in.

She stops, naked and dripping in the doorway, upon seeing him.

"Nox," she says, and slaps him. He can only begin to distinguish her silhouette, smooth and defined. Her tears drop on his head and slither down his back. "What were you thinking?" she cries. "You cannot touch the wand. I'm so disappointed. It isn't even yours."

"Wand," he repeats, pleased to have put a name to the dangerous stick that he still clutches.

"You have nothing. Nothing, do you hear me? The wand will not work for you. Never let me see you with it again. Oh, never, never again..."

She crumples to the floor and sobs, her slight frame shaking with the effort of misery. He feels as if he ought to apologize and comfort her now, but she will not let him touch her.

"No, not anymore," she says, not to him. "I can't let you. You're evil, so evil, and I think I'm afraid of you."

He leaves her then. In the bathroom, he forgets to mix the water properly, like Geneva showed him, and scalds himself badly. He would tell her, but she seems to have other things to worry about other than ministering to his infantile needs. He won't be read a story tonight.

In bed that night, Geneva has recovered something of her previous composure. He is awake, thinking, by the time she gets herself comfortable against him. Her eyelashes, still wet from tears, flutter against his arm. It calls to mind a butterfly for him, at first, but in the dark he starts to think of a moth instead, and for once he can remember:

"Snake-charmer, are you? Why not get a taste of something other then me arm next time!" A jeering voice, one of several, and the rude yanking of his jaw as something alive was shoved into his mouth. "Try your 'and at something other than gruel for once, won't you?"

Choking on the moth, he tried to spit it out. Some grimy hand clamped shut his mouth as another yelled out, "Orphan, orphan, you're an orphan."

They all put it into ragged song as the moth twitched about in his mouth and he was forced to swallow it. He had choked and almost died.

Thinking of it, he wrenches his arm from under Geneva's head and leaps out of the bed just in time. His vomit ends up on the floor and, after cleaning up, he sits at the chair of Geneva's desk and sleeps there instead.

_

"Geneva," he asks her as she ties her tie on this sunny morning, "what do you do in the day?"

Pulling her tie too tight, she chokes. "What's that?"

"During the day, when I'm tidying up and you go."

She relaxes. "Well, I go to teach people to read. Like you."

He doesn't understand. "Me?" Perhaps he misheard her, for he has never learnt to read, he's sure of it.

"Of course I was going to teach you to read," she says. "You just never brought it up before, so I wasn't sure." She smiles. "Are you excited?"

His world is the size of a pin; naturally, he is ecstatic.

It is during their dinner that he insists they start. It pleases him to find that his quick progress amazes Geneva. Somehow, he is not surprised to find himself capable of learning. In fact, he finds himself wondering arrogantly why he hadn't noticed before.

With his newfound knowledge, he is more observant. Sneaky, even. The dictionary in Geneva's desk drawer was something he had been made to seek of his own accord. He spent an entire day going through it, but it has not interested him but for one word:

amnesia loss of memory as a result of brain injury or deterioration, shock, illness, or psychoneurotic reaction

A microcosm of thought sparks suddenly in his head, bringing up ideas that, like fireworks, are soon gone. As if through the word's influence, he somehow can't remember why it mattered, or why he thought it to begin with. But he doesn't forget it easily, and in withdrawing to contemplate its significance, he concerns Geneva.

"You're too reticent," she says. Thinking for several minutes, she pulls out her wand. Using it with great aplomb, she conjures him a sandbox and a stick. Though she doesn't tell him what it is for, he soon guesses that he is to use the stick and trace patterns into the sand. The idea is a very tempting one, but he restrains himself that night, when she has fallen asleep.

Slowly, painstakingly, he scratches out letters in the sand. They are all ill formed and quite illegible, but he is proud still. Self-taught, he thinks, that's him. He envisions a future where Geneva scolds him about his messy writing and he excuses himself with this.

It is not for a while that he realizes what he has been writing, with a progressively neater and familiar hand: "I am lord Voldemort."

Quickly, he erases it, and for one last time, uses Geneva's wand. "Obliviate," he says, and afterwards cannot remember what spell he has used or how he knew it.

Crawling back into bed, he wraps his arms around her, and she turns in her sleep to face him.

_

She is watching him.

He has noticed before, yet the motive he assumed of her was misplaced. All this time, she has been staring at him watchful and wary. Is he a cannibal? he thinks indignantly. It's unfair to him to be treated so. He's working himself into frenzy.

It was all the fault of the mirror. From the start he had not been disposed towards it, partly because he was jealous of Geneva's brothers, and also because he could not find a logical explanation for it to be talking.

The talking was not so much his greatest worry as much as what the mirror actually said:

"Think Ginny fancies you, don't you? Here you are, head over heels, but what about her?" was just the beginning, and it was enough to terrify him. At this time in his life the slightest doubt about his security was enough to send him flying out the window to the callous, uncouth world below. And to hear her called Ginny!

Ignoring the mirror is only a start, but was voice is harsh and carrying.

"What's she doing with a man in her room anyway? Why's she hiding you? Young fellow like you and you're stuck in here all the time? Are you mental?" An endless prattle of the most horrible rhetorical questions. No longer could he share his pleasant monologue with the ceiling, for the mirror interceded. An opinion of its omniscience grew, cancerous, in his head, and in little time it terrified him.

It was not an entirely unpleasant experience to seek refuge in the bathroom. For his own reasons, he loves being able to use Geneva's soap; smelling the same way unites the two of them, makes them the same in a way that nothing else could. It gave him a sense of security that, if he ever left, the mirror would in time strip away.

He shared none of his fears with Geneva, and neither did the duplicitous mirror that cursed him so.

One day, though, the mirror went too far.

"Ginny's afraid of you," it taunted. "Always looking at you scared, hating you. She doesn't really lo-"

And that was it for him. A powerful rage took over, when all he wanted to do was destroy the horrible, ceaseless voice. Grabbing the lamp on the desk, he brought it down upon the mirror, breaking its words off into a high scream. Small shards of glass flew up into his face, but in the heat of the moment he was not prone to noticing.

By the time Geneva returned, the glass was cleared away and her wall was completely blank. She was surprised.

"The mirror was dangerous," he told her. "It talked about magic and outside."

This explanation pleased her so much she did not reprimand him, saying, "That means seven years of bad luck for you, you know."

He nodded. "I'll risk it."

As much as the end result pleased him, he could not forget the last words of the mirror. He observed Geneva like a cat: sly, quiet, ready to pounce.

The outcome is true to behold, and he does not like it. How can she be right in front of him, cowering yet vigilant, while he daydreams? Watching him, always afraid he will do something, always prepared to stop him. But what will he do? He's quite harmless.

It is customary for him to forgive her before she realizes she has sinned; he likes to feign her gratitude for her. This time, he never quite forgets, a slight mistrust of her forming in his mind.

_

Today, he is elated. He has been allowed access to the bookshelf, where he can study mythology intensely.

It is too bad, though, that today is when he should have this privilege, for there are so many more things to do. He wastes several minutes just enumerating the possibilities, counting his blessings while excitement builds.

First, he turns to his sandbox, his tabula rasa of the imagination. Again he wants to write something, but what?

He ponders this for a moment, and again his hand guides him:

Tom Marvolo Riddle
Mrs. Geneva Riddle

Lord Vol

Stopping, horrified and perplexed, he slaps at the sand with his hand to eradicate the last two lines. Standing from a distance, he surveys the remainder of his handiwork proudly, an artist and his masterpiece.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle," he says, relishing the sound of it. "Tom Marvolo Riddle." Again comes the welcome sound of an echo. "I AM," he yells, "TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE!"

He laughs suddenly, finding he can't stop, and falls back onto the bed. An overwhelming sense of joy fills him, replacing the sick fear of before. So this is it; this is who he is.

Riddle, Tom Riddle.

A smile breaks onto his face like sunlight on the horizon at dawn at the thought of Geneva's reaction. She'll be happy for him, he tells himself, she'll feel the same way he has. He imagines the benevolent smile on her face and it widens his own.

Though he immerses himself completely in almanacs of the driest sort for hours, he is ready when Geneva returns.

"Hello, Ginny," he greets her quietly, standing in the shadows. "I'm Tom Marvolo Riddle." The words seem familiar to him, as if he's rehearsed them or said them before.

Turning pale, she cries out suddenly, falling to the floor in a dead faint. He does what he can to revive her but she does not open her eyes for a very long time.

Later, he regrets the way he chose to tell her. He will never understand it; he will live it over, dreaming, wondering why he called her Ginny, why he acted like they'd never met, and mostly the motive behind them both.

_

"Geneva," Tom whispers to her, "I love you." They are lying in bed, invisible in the dark. This is the only time in which Tom divulges his secrets.

She is silent. If not for her sudden rigidity he would suspect that she hasn't heard him at all. Patient, he waits, expecting something from her, and is not disappointed.

"I know," she says loudly. "I know you do...Tom."

Smiling, he turns to his side, burrowing into the blankets, easily satisfied with whatever Geneva has to offer.

For once, it is Tom who is the first to fall asleep, Ginny the one awake, uneasy, and lost.

fin