Innocence of Youth

Innocence of Youth

For all of its savagery, the scene being enacted, reenacted, had a ritualistic quality to it: The sequence of events varied only slightly, and usually at the whim, if one could call it that, of the victim, not his tormentors. Would Tom punch and kick out at his assailants? Would he run and make the eventual beating worse? Would he attack them with words that somehow always drew emotional blood, though that effect was quickly covered by strained laughter and even more hitting than usual? Tonight, Tom was in a fighting mood, so he ran, wiping the blood from his nose and quickly flicked his tongue out to the back of his hand as he turned a corner. He ran to the office door of the head of the orphanage, a man all of the boys referred to as "Warden," for obvious reasons. Miraculously, as Tom spread his fingers to grasp the knob, the door seemed to have been left unlocked, and despite the Warden's highly rigid personality and habits, Tom didn't have time to feel surprised. He knew that this might well be the only door in the entire building that locked from the inside. He also figured the other boys would think twice before breaking the knubbly, smoked glass in this particular door, let alone actually damaging anything inside the Warden's office. On the other hand, Tom might well be stuck in the Warden's office all night and if he were caught here the punishments the Warden meted out weren't much better than the tortures the other boys seemed able to think up will an all too familiar ease.

Tom left aside those doubts for the moment and slipped noiselessly inside the room, slamming the door shut behind him in a blur. Even as he felt the hinges smoothly move, he was already putting his long, almost femininely delicate, fingers to the lock to twist that closed as well. The torch bearing mob, for that was how Tom thought of it -them- even though the crowd of coarse boys ran in the dark, were now rattling the door uselessly and he heard them slinging vile curses at the frosty door pane before they suddenly were hissed to silence by Angus McHugh, their erstwhile leader. The next instant that rabble was running of in the other direction amidst laughing whispers and a few soft hits at shoulders and backs. It didn't take more than a few seconds for Tom to see why. A torch moved along the floor and walls, flashing lazily past the pane of the window Tom hid behind. He flicked the tip of his tongue out slightly and heard the clipped staccato of one of the night guard's shoes as the man ambled past with a soft chuckle and Tom's midnight blue eyes narrowed. The guard undoubtedly knew it was just Angus' pack of wolf cubs tearing after some poor lamb. At St. Brutus' Boys' Home it was a truism barely worth repeating that the only people more sadistic than the children were the Governor, the Warden and the guards.

Tom slowly slid down the door, his back icy against the still colder wood of the door. His eyes were closed and his throat clenched but no tears slid from the corners of his eyes. Tom had learned early that whilst it might be logical to think that Angus' boys might have wanted to hear his cries for mercy and forgiveness, might just want to see his tears, that in fact those things merely seemed to incite greater pleasure and violence on Angus' part. Tom had even felt the hard, stiff plane of Angus twitching enthusiastically against his back, as the boy thrust Tom's head against the floor whilst cackling maniacally one time and that of course discounted the times that Angus had taken his sexual frustrations out on young Tom. Tom almost laughed at the preposterousness of how things had gotten even worse once Angus had reached puberty. Angus shouldn't have been wandering the halls thinking up the next punishment for Tom, not that Tom could ever remember doing anything to earn such punishments other than be a little different. He should have been mucking about with some of the other older boys exploring all the ways that they would eventually visit misery on future wives. But that didn't seem to interest Angus. The sexual pleasure did not seem to be the driver for Angus, the violence, the dominance, were the things that seemed to spur him on. In fact, it amazed Tom that people as stupid, as obtuse, as the Warden or Angus, let alone either of their respective groups of cronies, could be smart enough, original enough, to think of the exquisite, there could be no other word for it, tortures that they seemed regularly capable of devising.

Tom decided, consciously or otherwise, that it was time to clamp down on the indulgence of lingering on the pains and indignities he was suffering. Tom, at ten, was far too young to have to think the things he thought. He was, however, extremely smart. He was reading by three years old and though he was rarely if ever allowed to leave the orphanage, he already knew more about the world than most of the other boys simply because books were one of the few desires of his that he could and would allow himself.

St. Brutus' library served two purposes. Not only did it allow Tom to learn, if only little, it's true, given the selection of books, but it also was a room rarely sullied with the smells, sights or sounds of the other boys. The library was dilapidated, mildewing, veritably wilting under the weight of lavatories with their pull showers and stinking loos above it. But still, for Tom, it was his only escape. Even now, after seven years or so, the other boys rarely looked for him there.

Tom took a few more minutes to reclaim his breath and stop his heaving chest. Tom lifted his head, his fine though still blunt triangle of a chin coming up off his knees. He had never had the luxury of seeing the inside of the Warden's office by himself. He was usually accompanied by other boys and guards, whose stories were always accepted over Tom's versions, no matter how bizarre the others' tales might be, whilst Tom's self defenses, justifications, explanations were always rejected as quite ludicrous, no matter how logical they were. In this very room, Tom had had the most exquisite punishment of all thrust on him. He could still see the Warden's smoke yellowed teeth lit dully as the big bald head allowed itself the barest vestige of a curl at the corner of its blunt, liver coloured lips and of course, those words would be with him forever:

"You of course, are an exception here, little Mr. Riddle. Every boy here wishes, whether in hatred or love I would not hazard a guess, to know who his father is. Or was, I suppose. And almost none of them would hear a good story with a happy ending if they knew the truth. Most of their fathers are dead; a few probably still don't know that they have a son at St. Brutus'. But you, dear Mr. Riddle, you were rejected by a father with a nice house and a more than large enough account at Coutts to keep you, educate you, send you away to public school and never see you again if he so desired. And yet, here you are, sustained by the barest payments possible drawn every month from one of the poshest banks in England, utterly rejected by parents who obviously dislike you as much as every boy and every member of the staff here do."

Tom's thin lips twisted themselves bitterly, tongue flickering unnoticed against his lips as he slowly ran his slender fingers through his lustrous black hair. He knew a thousand Spanish prisoners, men in iron masks, had vowed it before, but the cliché sprang to his lips: "Someday I will make every last one of you pay." Tom's narrow face, prematurely melted free of its baby fat, showed his clenched teeth above the clean angles of his sharp jaw ending in its fine wedge of a chin. He had no idea how this ecstatic vision would come true. But as surely as he didn't know how the strange things that often seemed to occur around him, and that got him into so much trouble, happened so he knew that someday he would visit the Warden's and Angus' tortures back on them a thousand fold.

* * * * * * *

Tom sat huddled in the library's small alcove to the right of the entrance, tightly coiled on himself. That way, even when one of Angus' little followers came looking for him he was still out of sight. His knees were to his chest supporting a book. A few boxes of new books had recently been delivered to the orphanage care of St George's Cathedral. At least Tom was offered some happiness by the Church of England for these occasional book deliveries. Within reason the boxes were hardly checked and any number of "adult" books slipped in to St. Brutus' to help Tom's self administered education. He wasn't sure what dolt of a priest had let TS Elliot's The Wasteland slip into a Christian orphanage but the concept of the hollow men resonated with him. Tom flicked his tongue over his delicate wedge of a chin in a small touch of humour. Tom was not, by nature, overly introverted and certainly was not terribly introspective. Only circumstances forced him to live so deeply buried inside his own brain.

If St. Brutus' bothered to keep a psychologist on staff, the doctor might have taken note that Tom had begun to evince dislocation with his surroundings as well as his emotions. Tom might barely have kept his reality in check, barely have kept his personality, such as it was, intact, but his emotions were as much weapons that betrayed him in the employ of Angus and those boys as their fists and feet were. His tears, his entreaties only caused him greater embarrassment and hurt. And it was all the more unfortunate that Tom's tormentors had singled him out, for he could have had many friends: Between his relatively advanced education and his wit, Tom was charming. He could be as full of well directed flattery and compliments as he could be of the vicious barbs that he flung out at Angus with such studied precision when his patience failed him. Tom wasn't sure where this ability to know exactly what would most personally wound his victims had come from, he just seemed to know and that was becoming a blessing to his sense of justice given that justice was sorely lacking in every other aspect of his life. Tom had a rare trait known as charisma, but none of the other boys, even the other recipients of Angus' attentions would dare follow Tom; to do so, see Tom for the leader he should have been, would be far too dangerous for the boys in the orphanage. Angus might be fat and stupid, with barely a brain hidden beneath his dull, straw blonde hair and behind his piggy jowls, but his vengeance, his club-like anger, were not to be risked by anyone at St. Brutus' save for the staff and even then some of the guards were wary of him.

That day Tom was reading Utopia by Sir Thomas Moore, yet another book that a good Christian institution (here Tom almost snorted, but he was too controlled with his emotions by this time) should have neither hide nor paper of. Tom only bothered to finish the book because he knew he would finish all of the tatty books in the dilapidated library before too long. He was a prodigious and speedy reader and there were only so many books at St. Brutus'. When Tom could manage it he would spend entire evenings hidden in the library, reading all night. For some reason, every so often Tom could make everyone, even Angus, seem to simply forget that he existed: The guards wouldn't bother to prod the lumpy form beneath his scratchy, starchy square of grey blanket; Angus would round on some other worthy soul; and Tom would simply fade away until all that remained of him went unnoticed in his squalid little sanctuary. The very concept of a utopia was becoming increasingly repellent to Tom as he read. "What idiots," he smirked to himself. Such escapist, dreaming drivel had attracted Tom greatly when he first got comfortable reading. Fairy tales, fantasies, anything of the sort he could lay hands on, no matter how pagan, were his first friends and escape artists. Tom had decided before he was five that if a god existed than the deity was as bad as any evil in creation. And now, the dark, the cynical, was beginning to appeal to him more and more. For instance, even stupider for its presence than Utopia, which at least was probably not a sin, was Brave New World. That was as sound an indictment of Christianity as it was of modern society in general. Yes, Tom was definitely finding something very interesting in these authors of the past ten or twenty years.

Tom stretched out his lanky torso and limbs as he finished the book. He lifted Paradise Lost back up with a touch of reverence, a book he was thoroughly enjoying for both its operatic, epic nature as well as its subject: the tale of Lucifer, the morning star. Tom couldn't help but identify at least somewhat with the misshapen prince of darkness. Here was the most beautiful, most powerful, angel in Heaven cast from Paradise and left to his own devices in a pool of flames. Even worse, though, than Heaven's hatred, was that the once beloved prince was now apparently not even worthy of celestial notice. Tom stopped his thoughts there; he clamped them into a prison, as it were, by sheer force of will. He would not think of his father or why his father might possibly have left him in this burning lake, completely indifferent to Tom's fate, to the pain he was submitted to nearly every night. For Satan had his own sublime charms, did he not? He had his own rapture to offer the unwary or ambitious did he not? Tom's thin lips curled up ever so slightly yet again. But it was God the Father, clearly, who held all the cards. God sent all the messengers after all. That meant God controlled all the messages. And seeing as Tom didn't believe in God, he thought, with grim satisfaction, "why shouldn't I send the messengers? Why shouldn't I control the messages?" Now it simply remained to find out how. Tom could be patient and with his intelligence, he would eventually work out the most prominent mystery of his young life.

And so, lost to his poisonous, though perhaps hard earned, thoughts, Tom wended his way, book in hand, into his eleventh year. And without a pocket watch or, currently, the self interest obviously, to pay attention to such matters, Tom of course had no way of knowing, here where the clock hadn't spun to show the correct time since some point during the Great War, that the first moment of the rest of his life had already come and gone. He had not noticed his birthday in spite of his fastidious nature about almost everything else because it was too tied to emotions that should be happy for him to give it its fair acknowledgement. Tom could not allow himself happy emotions as to do so was to let those traitorous negative emotions back into the fray. He ran his belly-pale fingers through his full, raven hair again and looked back to the book when he heard a noise. He quickly pulled back from the circle of soft light cast through the barred window by a gas lamp next to the building and hunched into the shadows further back in the alcove, curling tightly. He almost didn't believe that one of Angus' idiot boys would be looking for him here but one could never expend too much time and energy on self-preservation and he had definitely heard a noise.

There, again: a light tapping or scratching, almost as of some medieval soul trapped alive in a grave. Tap, tap, he could just hear it over the soft rain that barely affected the grime on the windows. Tap, tap, scratch and finally, a soft, though determined hooting. "Hooting?" thought Tom. All of the turtle doves should be asleep...And then, at last he saw it: a great brown owl, speckled with grey and black. Its long delicate brows mirrored its splendid wingspan; its queer, yellow lantern eyes almost hypnotized him for a second before his mind reasserted its typical control over his body. The owl had something tied to its leg just above the knobs and grooves of its bony talon by a green ribbon. Hanging, looking out of place given how much larger it was then its holder, was a large parchment yellow envelope, the same colour as some of the older books in the orphanage's library dating back from the time of the old Queen's Jubilee. Tom gathered his wits about him. As frightening as the sound of this odd creature had been when it abruptly startled him out from the pages of his book, the bird was clearly some sort of homing owl and had misplaced a message. Perhaps if he could figure out who it belonged to and wrangle a way to return the envelope to its rightful recipient he might also wrangle a way out of St. Brutus' or at least get to someone who would believe his tale of the ersatz "Christian" house's atrocities, at least in some small part.

It took well over a second, those tired drops wetting Tom's front and feet, for him to realize with a tongue flicking, pupil narrowing, start that the glass had gone missing from the window, though the bars still bore witness to the fact that there was indeed something worth fleeing from inside those windows they guarded. The owl thrust its talon through the bars, carrying the envelope with it, and in a rustle and quiet slither of paper bore it into Tom's dry grasp. Tom quickly undid the ribbon and flipped over the blank envelope only to feel his jaw snap open and his delicate batwing brows shoot high on his forehead: The letter was addressed to one Mr. Tom Marvolo Riddle, The Alcove off the Library, St. Brutus' Christian Institute for Underage Orphan Boys. Tom looked around him, but almost instantly decided that this was a prank so clearly beyond the resources of Angus McHugh that he immediately, instinctively, dismissed that concern. He doubted even the Warden had the means of sending a message by owl of all things. Tom took a deep breath to steady him body and breath but then looked up as the owl began to hoot in farewell and spread its wings in gentle darting motions.

"Wait, please," Tom held up a hand, long fingers like a wall in front of the owl, not sure why he found himself taking to an owl, and still less why it did not feel a preposterous action, "I don't know what any of this is about."

The owl began to hoot a bit disdainfully until it shined its lantern eyes on its talon, which was still between the bars, stuck it seemed. It hooted more resignedly this time, not noticing Tom's sudden amusement at its misfortune, and then contented itself with its head under its wing for a moment whilst it waited for Tom to read his unexpected letter. The letter, on heavy parchment, informed Tom, in beautiful, curled script that he had apparently been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by one Armando Dippet, Headmaster, as well as his Deputy, Albus Dumbledore. Tom couldn't keep himself from scoffing. He didn't know how the Warden had managed to accomplish this, but he was the only one capable of such a cruel joke at Tom's expense. Angus and his followers must certainly know that Tom was desperate to escape the confines of St. Brutus', but only the Warden had the brain to manifest that longing as a whip with which to scar Tom's mind or heart as surely as Angus did Tom's body. But where in all of bloody creation would the Warden have gotten a tamed owl? That made far less sense than the joke.

Tom was obviously aware that strange things happened around him, to him, to those near him, but even the window mysteriously missing its glass must have a simpler, or maybe more complex, answer than Tom's having magical powers like someone from one of those fool stories he'd already given up before he was eight, hadn't it?

"You, bird, do you understand me?" Tom stood facing the owl with his midnight eyes narrowed, dark against the pallid lamp light, his left arm resting the point of its elbow on his right, which was crossing his chest, his left hand fingers curled under the blunt, though delicate edge of his chin save for his index finger which stroked his temple.

The owl took its head from under its wing and hooted softly at Tom. His eyes widened. Although he had spoken to it, he felt foolish and certainly hadn't expected a response. He quickly decided to believe, if only for a moment, no matter how much letting his defenses down might hurt him tomorrow. Tom scrounged around, found a bit of paper and some chalk and neatly blocked out a plea: "Trapped at St. Brutus'. No money and no idea of what this "Diagon Alley" is or how to get there. If any of this is true, please let me know what to do. Signed, Tom Marvolo Riddle." Perhaps there would be no harm in playing along for a bit, he smirked at himself and then retied the ribbon on the owl's talon, this time with his scrap of paper, pausing for a few seconds to enjoy his sudden power over something for a change from his norm before freeing the owl's talon from between the bars.

"I suppose I'll wait here for you? Tomorrow night?" The owl hooted reassuringly but shrugged its wings somewhat as if to say, I will fly back here, but when?, and then flew off. Tom stared after the great brown bird until it disappeared and then finally let himself fall back to the floor, knees back up to his chest, supporting the triangle of his delicate chin.

The next night, though, Tom was not nearly so lucky. After a long day of scrubbing the wash rooms, loos included of course, of being told he would skip the midday meal that day by the Warden for no discernable reason, Tom found himself once again trapped by Angus and company. The boys almost seemed gentle tonight, just sharp little pinches from all sides and only slightly louder snickers. Angus loomed in front of Tom, his piggy eyes squinting into Tom's own narrowed slits, his smile wide, gap toothed and proffering Tom his rotten meat breath. Tom kept himself fairly limp but Angus could see that Tom wanted to lash out, strike back somehow.

"Now, now Tom, where's the fun in that? Here we are being all nice to you and you can't even thank us?"

Tom started to open his mouth to offer something sharp and serrated in turn but before he could even begin Angus' fist was already moving. Though Angus might look soft and plodding to the uninitiated, few things were further from the truth. Beneath his winter coating, as Tom thought of it, though he kept it year round, Angus was as solid as Scottish hardwood. His fist moved in a blur into Tom's gut and the younger boy had no time to dodge or kick out. Tom simply doubled over, mucus sputtering from his lips as he gasped for the air that refused to enter his mouth.

"Come on then boys, gather the little Riddle up then shall we?" And with that Angus turned, almost magisterially, as difficult a concept as that was for Tom to accept, and led the way up the corridor as Tom felt several feet find their way into his ribs and was then half picked up, half dragged along behind Angus. It wasn't too long before Tom realized where Angus was heading. He tried to struggle but he knew there really wasn't any chance of escaping whatever Angus had planned and only got himself kicked and punched several more times for his efforts. He spat out a few cruel slings and arrows at his captors but that only returned him a punch to the jaw hard enough that Tom knew he was lucky to still have the tooth he felt wobbling slightly in its socket at all. His tongue tasted the salty metallic of the thick copper blood that slid over the tooth just before it drooled slowly from his numb mouth and onto his bed clothes. He couldn't keep himself from noting the trouble he would be in when the morning attendants saw that he had ruined a perfectly good top. Tom decided he would be best served by keeping his mouth shut and just trying to let them finish whatever they had planned quickly.

Angus was saying something in his thick cockney to Tom, but his voice was pitching in and out of Tom's range like the sermons they had to listen to on the wireless on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings. Tom felt positive that it was important, whatever Angus was saying, that he was expected to reply, but Tom couldn't hear, could barely speak and his eyes kept rolling back a bit in his head so that only a slitted crescent of pupil remained visible below his upper lid. Tom was finding it as hard to see as he was to hear, but that didn't keep him from recognizing that they were in the lavatory above the library. "Why here?" Tom almost thought, though in some recess of his mind he knew why. Tom was barely conscious, he knew that, and he was absolutely certain that that could not possibly be a good thing for his health but he couldn't seem to focus. He could almost make out words like pallid vibrations through the air.

Suddenly Angus' doughy face was right in front of him and he felt his head pulled pack sharply so that once again his deep, midnight blue eyes were held, spellbound, it felt, right in front of Angus' pale blue irises. "Are yeh gonna ignore me then, yeh little brat? Thinks he's the guvnuh, don' 'ee boys? We'll just have to remin' him then that he's nothin' but a gutter rat. Comes from a posh family I heard the Warden say once. Nothin' but a servant, now though, inn'ee?" Angus snarled and grabbed the blunt tip of Tom's chin. "Let's show 'im then boys!"

With that Tom felt himself thrown into the toilet. Angus' lackeys held his head beneath the stinking water, or was it Angus himself? Tom couldn't be sure. The feces and urine were making him gag and he knew he couldn't hold his breath much longer. Someone kept pushing his face further into the water and excrement and all his flailing seemed to do nothing until...

Suddenly he felt the hands drop away and he lunged upward, sucking in all of the air he could. He turned quickly around to see boils erupting on the face and hands of the boy who had held his face in the toilet. Angry welts were on his arms as well as those of the other two boys who had pinned him. The other boys backed off uncertainly.

"Wha-?" Angus began but seeing what was happening to his boys he wasn't sure whether to pummel Tom or run. Dim as he was, though, he sensed a moment from which he could not back down. He rushed forward and grabbed Tom by the neck, pummeling him repeatedly in the gut at the same time until black stars blossomed in front of Tom's eyes. Tom could hear Angus ranting nearly incoherently about "the freak" and "think you can show us, aye?" Tom knew he was again on the verge of passing out but he could still see well enough to catch the sudden explosion of blood from Angus' nose causing the fat boy to stagger back in alarm. Bellowing, he wiped his nose fearfully as blood continued to cascade down the lower half of his face.

"You're some kind of demon Tom! I'll make you pay for this!" And grabbing some towels for his nose he quickly directed his little army to get away before one of the guards came. Tom knew that the same held for him. He spit out the blood and feces and quickly retched, vomit joining the soup in the bowl. Then without bothering to wipe his face, Tom ran as fast as his beaten body would allow to the library before the guard could catch him in the now filthy bathroom. Bad enough that he would have to clean it tomorrow, that he would be humiliated yet again, but he didn't need another beating before the night was out on top of that.

It was only when Tom got to the library that he remembered he was expecting correspondence this evening. He saw another beautiful envelope waiting for him, though this time the owl was already gone. Tom reached for the letter before seeing how filthy his hands were and pausing to wipe off the blood and muck. He then steadied himself with his habitual smirking deep breath and let his long, slender fingers catch the letter to him. Tom slipped one ragged, filthy nail beneath the flap and opened the parchment envelope and then began to read the letter that emerged. It told him that on the morrow, the 25th of August, someone would come round to help him get to this "Diagon Alley," whatever and wherever that was, to purchase his books and other school things, however unbelievable some of those other items might sound to Tom.