You look mighty like that Muggle

It is the summer of 1942 and the Grindelwald War hangs in the balance. The Battle of the Atlantic has not yet been won - or lost, depending on where you stand – and while Britain may be safe from invasion, it is not clear that the Allies will win the war. Yet somehow I do not think that this is weighing heavily on the minds of Morfin Gaunt or Tom Riddle.

Chapter 1: Frank Bryce

He'd been rolling the lawn that is his pride and joy - there's a big enough vegetable patch round the back of the Riddle House for him to manage, so he's not digging up the lawn for potatoes - when he'd seen a teenage boy at the front gate. The boy was tall and dark-haired, and there was something familiar about him, though he couldn't think why, because he was sure he'd never seen the lad before. And there was something odd about him, too, it had taken a little while to work out what it was - it was the boy's pale face, because it's the second week of August, it's high summer, and everyone is as brown as a nut.

He'd thought, maybe the young fellow has lost his way, because they took all the signposts down when the war started, on account of the Fifth Columnists, and he'd been half-minded to stop work for a moment and speak to the boy, but when he'd next looked up, the youth was gone - but he'd kept on thinking about him, because they don't get many strangers in Little Hangleton. He'd decided that the boy must be one of the evacuees from the big air-raid on York in April who've been billeted in Great Hangleton - and he wasn't going to forget that raid in a hurry. The crump, crump, crump of the bombs had started just after midnight, and he couldn't help himself, he'd cowered in his bed because it was just like the rumble of the guns at the front in the last war, the rumbling that never, never stopped - it only got worse, when there was a big push on.

And he can't forget the last war, either - the War to End All Wars they'd called it, but the wars haven't ended because they're fighting the Huns again, it's worse even than the last time because the Germans are just across the Channel, and every ship that the U-boats sink in the North Atlantic means tighter rationing, means the belt has to be pulled in another notch. There's fighting in Egypt, and on the other side of the world - the Japanese are in Burma and in New Guinea, they might be in Australia next - and in Russia, too, in some place he'd never heard of before and isn't even sure where it is. The Germans and the Russians are fighting a terrible battle at the gates of Stalingrad, Stalin's own city, and Stalin is a Red Communist, Mr Churchill doesn't like Red Communists - and he'd thought, what's going to happen even if we do manage to beat Hitler? Will it be the Soviets next? And then he'd thought, sometimes I think that someone is stirring up trouble, someone is making this happen - not that he'd ever dare say anything so crazy out loud, because he knows what they say about him in the village.

Yes, he knows what they say in the Hanged Man, even though he doesn't go in there, it's too noisy and too crowded - he knows what they say about him, they say he's a bit odd, they say the last war turned him funny - and that's true enough. And he knows what they say about the Riddles, too, but the Riddles have always been good to him, there hadn't been much work for a man who'd come back from the Great War with a game leg and shell-shock, but they'd found a job and a cottage for him, as gardener. But in the village they still gossip about the Riddles, people still talk about when young Mr Riddle threw over Lady Cecilia and ran away to London with that old tramp's daughter, married her so they say, the girl was going to have a baby - but that wasn't true because Mr Riddle came back home a few months later without either wife or baby. And then the old man had died in the little shack on the other side of the valley, all alone, because the son had gone off somewhere - it had been a couple of weeks before anyone had realised that he was dead, they'd had to get the police in, from Great Hangleton - but then the son came back and he still lives there, they say the poor fellow is touched in the head, mutters and hisses to himself ...

Then he'd pushed all thoughts of the Gaunts out of his mind because he doesn't hold with nasty gossip, put the roller away because it was starting to get dark, and made his way home to his cottage - dodging round the back of the stables so that blasted chatterbox of a woman in the kitchen wouldn't see him and try yet again to get him in for a cuppa. And now he's thinking that it's a lovely warm summer evening, he'll knock up a bit of tea, then he'll smoke and listen to the war news on the wireless for a while before it's time to turn in, it's going to be a busy day tomorrow, he's going to separate and plant out the strawberry runners and prune the blackcurrants right back to ground level ...