Teratogenesis

Teratogenesis

Evil is obvious only in retrospect.

-- Gloria Steinem

"Miss Johnson says Mama became a birdie and flew into the sky to be a pretty star."

Amy Benson twirls her ribboned plaits around her small hands and smiles wistfully. He barely suppresses urges to yank her hair and split her lip with his own twitching fingers. "That one must be her," she coos, pointing to the brightest star she can see. "Isn't she special? Which one's your mama, Tom?"

"You're a complete raving loon, Benson. She can't have been special at all if she died." And he answers her question by scowling darkly at the dimmest star of seven.

* * *

Tom despises all of the orphanage's children, but he reserves a special hatred for the ones who babble to their pets as if the disgusting animals could understand their nonsense. When little Billy won't stop whispering to his rabbit after Tom tells him to shut up, he finds her swinging like a pendulum from the rafters, blood-red eyes bulging, mouth in mid-scream. Tom smiles serenely, admiring its slow, steady, silent rhythms.

At Hogwarts, Tom hears hisses flowing through the pipes like water, and feeling foolish, he lets the mouth of the drain swallow his first word whole down its endless throat.

"Hello."

* * *

It is only his first time, but Tom is a perfectionist, and he eyes the girl's limp body with the same disdain he would a smudge of dirt on his polished loafers. He artfully props her up against the toilet, draping the arms modestly across her lap, and smoothing the stringy hair down with spit. The broken glasses are nestled on her nose with mock politeness. The grotesque open mouth is snapped shut. If he didn't know better, he'd mistake her for a pathetic rag doll.

"It's not personal, Mudblood," he hisses, leaning close to her ear. "It's strictly business."

* * *

Tom Riddle is staring through an invisible mirror.

There is the way the hair falls into neat black waves, rigid and slick all at once. How the stone-grey irises seem to multiply endlessly in single-file as they stare eye-to-eye out of deep sockets, eyebrows arched with elegant indignation. Their noses slope at identical angles, chins tilt skywards in the same snobbish manner, hollow cheeks sharp like cut glass. The mouths are faintly lopsided, yet charmingly so. They even knot their matching ties the same way.

The only small difference one notices is how his reflection looks ever so slightly deceased.

* * *

Tom always knew he was special, and he never let anyone forget it. The orphans feared that look of his when displeased. He read books too advanced for his age, drowning professors in arcane knowledge until they gawked with open fish-mouths. His Head Boy badge caught even the faintest sparks of light, and bovine-eyed students couldn't help staring -- sacred artifacts mustn't be touched.

Now he sits alone, a ring crowning his wax-skinned finger. He smiles as it grows heavier with each distortion in his face.

He would never live like common people. But he would never die like them either.