1935

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Tom Riddle knew his life was one of contradictions.

He was penniless and owned next to nothing. The things that belonged to him were not really his—not his room, his bed, his rickety wooden wardrobe, his schoolbooks or shabby grey orphanage uniforms with yellowed collars on the shirts and patches on the trousers. These material things had all been given to him, and had belonged to someone else before him, and would go to another nameless orphan once he'd outgrown them.

But there was one thing he had that was truly valuable, priceless, a thing that was his and no one else's, not a hand-me-down assigned to him from the communal linen cupboard by an apathetic matron, not a useless dolly or teddy or pennywhistle taken from a snivelling brat in a disciplinary action courtesy of Wool's Orphanage School of Life Lessons. (Tom Riddle was its schoolmaster, and all residents under the age of ten years old were his obedient disciples, whether they liked it or not.)

That thing of his.

The contradiction in his life that his schoolbooks said couldn't be real, because there were fundamental rules of the universe for things like that, because Newton said this, and Galileo said that... But his own eyes had confirmed the truth, as did the truths he found in the scared and tearful eyes of Eric or Billy or Dennis or whichever interchangeable orphan it was that had offended him that day.

The truth: that he wasn't mad. He was Special.

It was his Specialness that allowed Tom to break the rules of the universe and get away with it. No one had showed up at the doorstep—beyond picking up the empty milk crates or dropping off an illegitimate baby or two—to take away his entropy-defying abilities in the name of Saving the Universe. No, life went on, and Tom drew on the well of Specialness inside him that answered to his will, and the universe continued to putter on around him as per usual, as ignorant and intact as it had always been.

And so Tom's life continued, each day as monotonous as the one before, the school lessons pointless, the people around him receding into the background like the cardboard backdrops of the Easter Fair's Punch and Judy show. They fell into their inbuilt routines by instinct, just like migrating starlings, going in circles with the rest of the flock, chirping out the same stock phrases, the Good Mornings and How Do You Dos making his eyelids twitch when he could sense the insincerity behind the words. At times he was tempted to force them to tell the truth, to make them aware that they were just starlings and that he was not, but some part of him warned against flouting the rules of the universe too soon and drawing the attention of the Maintenance Committee of Existence before he was ready to defeat them.

He was, of course, only eight years old.

In the eyes of his caretakers, he was a child, just as much as he was a starling, at least for the next ten years. Until he turned eighteen. Then he'd be forced out of the nest (he was being generous with his metaphors here; it was Wool's they were talking about, after all) to fend on his own. After that, he could die for all they cared—he'd seen more than a few young men be pushed out of the rusty gates, to enlist in the soon-to-be war rumbling in the stirring pot of the Continent. And no one batted an eye that they were probably going to die. Dead or alive, they'd be called Brave Young Souls, and people would mutter reverently about King and Country, and so on.

Tom's internal monologue on the nesting habits of the common European starling was interrupted by voices outside his grimy bedroom window, a shrill clamouring of children in the small, paved courtyard between the front gates and the orphanage's main entrance.

He peered out, rubbing his palm over the foggy glass. It was mid-December, and the heating was intermittent. When it wasn't raining, the temperature difference between indoors and out was negligible, and as such, the children were allowed to go out for walks as long as they were back in time for dinner.

His room was on the third floor, so he had a decent view of the front gates. The sky and the street below were veiled in a miasmic grey pea-souper of a fog—this was London in winter, so that wasn't much of a surprise—but what had drawn his attention was a motorcar gliding out of the fog and in through the open gates. A shiny blue automobile with a big silver grille on front, whitewall tires and polished hubcaps, and a lady with a fur-collared coat stepping out of it, no doubt clutching her pearls close to her throat, because it was in poor taste to flaunt one's wealth to this poverty-stricken side of London.

(Nevermind that this lady's entire well-bred existence was a big, phlegmmy gob in the eyes of the hand-to-mouthers who lived here.)

Tom heard the dinner bell ringing from downstairs, and the clatter of feet pounding down the stairs. It had only been an hour or two since lunch, and thus too early for dinner, so—

He scowled.

It must be one of those days.

Adoption Days, where everyone had to comb their hair, spit-wipe their snotty noses, and line up by Mrs. Cole's office so any family looking for a free servant or a replacement child when one of their own moved away or died could pick one up. Like picking puppies out of a window display. To Tom's relief, the number of people wanting to pat his head and inspect his teeth had gone down significantly as he'd aged. He couldn't stand people touching him, or even being near him, which was how he'd wangled a room to himself when everyone else had to share.

When he'd reached the ground floor, he saw Martha bustling about and handing boxes over to the older girls, and Mrs. Cole attempting to make conversation to the rich lady—more like try to coax her into donating cash, or better yet, taking a sweet, angelic little sprog out of her hands.

"—These'll go well with the girls; Christmas is always a stretch, especially these days."

"Well, the ladies of St. John's are happy to help those less fortunate. Those boxes there are my own daughter's clothes—she's outgrown them, and they're in good shape and ought to go to those who need them more than we do. The boys' clothes are to the left, just a bit worn—Mrs. Fanshaw's boys were rather rough with their things—but they've still a few years' wear left."

"Oh, splendid," said Mrs. Cole, flapping her hands at Martha and Lizzie and Dotty. "Sort them and lay them out, we'll see if we can have a new set of clothes for each child, or a new jumper and coat each."

"You can give everyone a new book, too," said the rich lady. "We brought a few boxes of those. Bibles and hymn books, though I'm sure you have some of your own, and some of ours from home. Our Hermione didn't want to give them up from her collection, but we were running out of shelf space as it was, so we told her we hadn't room for anything new unless she cleared out some of the old ones."

She smiled fondly down to her right, and there, peeking out from behind her skirts was a little girl with winter-pale skin and the kind of frizzy brown hair that Tom associated with pet poodles and old floor mops. She was of the same age as he was, much smaller if one didn't count the few inches of height added by her hair. To his annoyance, she was better dressed than he, in a ruffled pinafore dress under a pink wool coat, and pristine patent Mary Janes with not a mark on them, unlike the scuffs on his own boots that he'd mostly polished away with a lump of beeswax. She, unlike him, probably used the motorcar every time she stepped foot outdoors.

"The books will go to our reading room," Mrs. Cole said, her eyes turning this way and that, tongue clicking when she'd seen that the children had found the box of toys, spilling lead soldiers and sock monkeys to the floor. Her gaze fell on Tom, standing innocently by the doorway, his face blank. "Tom, you'll take them there, and bring the empty boxes back with you."

At the mention of books, the girl's eyes lit up, and she turned to her mother. "Can I see the reading room, Mummy?"

Her mother gave an indulgent smile to her daughter, and Mrs. Cole hesitated, before fixing her eyes on Tom and giving him a Look.

"I'll show her the way, Mrs. Cole," Tom offered, his face shifting into his harmless angel expression.

If he got to take the books up, then he'd have his first pick of the selection, before the little brats got crayon or jam or gravy or other mysterious and disgusting stains over the pages.

The concept of private property at Wool's Orphanage was somewhat theoretical. No one owned anything and all resources were communal. (Common sense said that the contents of Mrs. Cole's office and person were off-limits, so Tom had limited himself to reading through her paperwork and appointment book whenever he got the chance. He'd been fairly disgusted by the mess of empty gin bottles in the bottom desk drawer, and also vindicated in the assumption that she found dealing with orphans all day was as tiresome as he did.)

Anything donated to the orphans was common property and therefore fair game for Tom. Possession of toys and trinkets was directly correlated to the ability one had to hide and protect said items. From experience, Tom knew that the nicest ones could be had from the children who'd only been recently admitted to the orphanage, souvenirs of their past lives. At the end of the day, Tom could admit his "games" were all quite silly and childish, but nevertheless, they were amusing, and there was little else he could do to fill the vast stretch of time before he turned eighteen.

Tom nudged open the door to the reading room with his elbow, his arms laden with a box of books. The little fluffy-haired rich girl followed behind, her eyes darting up and down, at the soot-smudged plaster moulding of the ceiling, the worn floorboards creaking under their feet. He wondered if she noticed the small, dried bloodstain by the landing where Jimmy Thurgood had tripped on his way down the stairs one morning and lost a tooth; he hadn't had any valuables to confiscate, so Tom had had to take his payment elsewhere.

"Oh, this is nice," she said politely, eyeing the shelves of timeworn books, the rows of peeling spines and faded lettering. She clutched a box in her arms, biting her lip and shifting from foot to foot.

Tom glanced down at the open box in his arms. The books were lightly used, as evidenced by the smudge of fingerprints on the covers, the soft feathering of paper in the corners. But it was obvious that they'd been bought new, then discarded for having been read once or twice. Given away to make room for more, with a certain careless extravagance that he despised.

He decided that he hated this girl, her fur-bedecked mother, and her fancy motorcar and shiny, shiny shoes.

"Put the books on the table over there," Tom ordered, "and sort them by type. Bibles go to the left, school books in the middle, and fairy stories on the right."

"Fairy stories?" the girl huffed, shoving her box onto the table. "Excuse me?"

"Aren't these your old books?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"You're, what, six years old? And you're a girl," said Tom with a sniff. "Anything that isn't Bibles and textbooks will be fairy stories."

The girl's eyes narrowed in anger. "I'm nine! And you're very rude, you know."

"That's only fair," Tom said, pulling his orphan card with glee. Normally he didn't make much of the fact that he was parentless to outsiders, not wanting to make himself an object of pity and sympathetic head-patting and other such intrusive personal space invasion. But his status was impossible to hide from her. "I haven't any parents to teach me manners."

"You might have been adopted if you were nicer," the girl replied, in a remarkable show of tactfulness.

"Are you offering your parents, then?"

"N-no."

"Even if I promised to be nice?"

"No!" The girl's face had gone quite pink, he was pleased to see.

"There, now you see why I don't bother with being nice," Tom said in a cold voice, as he tipped the books out onto the table and turned them over to read the covers.

The girl sputtered for a moment, a furrow forming between her eyebrows. "What about common decency?"

"What about it?"

"Well, people have to be nice to each other, even if they don't feel like it, for the benefit of the community. It's true that people often want to be mean to others, and sometimes it's hard for them not to, but it's happier and more peaceful for everyone around them if they don't." She dug around in the box and pulled out a book with a scratched cover. The Principles of Political Philosophy, Tom read. "It's called a social contract; I read it in this book." The girl gave him a superior look and lifted her nose. "And as you can see, it's not a fairy story."

He returned her superior look with one of his own. What kind of person told people off by reciting rules lists from a musty old book? Clergymen and grannies, that's who. And this girl, apparently. "Do you always parrot things that come out of a book?"

"When I think they're important and worth sharing," said the girl crossly, her knee giving a little twitch, as if she were only a few prods away from stamping her feet. "But if you don't care, then I'll have my books back."

"You can't have them back, you already gave them away," Tom retorted, his interest returning to book sorting.

Beneath the layer of Bibles was an eclectic mix of titles. Elementary Primer of English Grammar, boring. Junior's Basic Arithmetic, Volume I, and The Young Lady's Companion For Maintaining a Bright and Happy Home, no thank you. He could see there were a number of books on etiquette, and he had to wonder why anyone thought they would be of use to the children who lived here. None of the girls in residence would end up married to a "proper gentleman"; even being legally married at all was pushing the limits of probability. Let alone owning a full service of formal silver tableware.

Creation Myths of Ancient Persia, The Mediterranean Mushroom Hunting Guide, On the Tectonic Formation of the British Isles, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Now this was much more promising.

"Oh, now you decide you want them?" the girl asked, watching him pile up the books he wanted to take a look at later.

"Maybe," said Tom indifferently. "I won't decide if they're worth keeping until I read them."

"But they're worth reading, even if they're girly fairy stories?"

"They might be acceptable fairy stories, but I won't know if I haven't finished them," Tom said, eyeing a book on Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia.

"Acceptable," the girl sniffed. "You'd probably like that one. There are lots of battles and horses and Emperors, and a million soldiers who died in awful ways; it's the kind of thing that not-nice boys like you would like, isn't it?"

Tom ran his finger down the spine of the book. This one wasn't going to get splashed with ink or juice before he'd reached the end. "And I suppose a nice girl like you didn't like it at all?"

The girl frowned in thought, then said, "It wasn't a nice book, but it was interesting. I... I don't have to think it's nice to like it."

"That's the most intelligent thing you've said all day," said Tom.

The girl harrumphed and slammed a heavy Bible onto the table. Tom gave her a wicked smirk, which she returned with an irritated lift of her chin. They returned to sorting the books, the girl giving occasional sidelong glances to the pile he'd collected by his elbow, for bedtime reading.

She left before dinnertime, and the motorcar drove out from the gates, the growl of the engine muted in the low-hanging fog.

After dinner, Tom mentally revised his list of possessions. He had his private room and all the orphanage-issued things inside it. He had his Specialness. And now he had a dozen books of his own, not quite new, but in better condition than any of the other books he owned. They'd been given by a girl that he didn't like at all, but who did, he was forced to admit, have a decent taste in literature.

To his annoyance, he had to admit that her handwriting was decent too.

He felt some satisfaction in scratching out the name Hermione J. Granger from the bookplates pasted inside the covers. He felt even more satisfaction writing his own name inside, even though he knew that no one would ever see it, because these books would never join the Bibles and etiquette manuals in the communal library.

(And yes, he did end up taking that book on social contracts, if only so that he could tell the girl her ideas about common decency were stupid, the next time she showed her face at Wool's. This kind of thinking was like teaching sheep to shear themselves, which benefitted the shepherd more than the flock.

She could argue about "the needs of the flock", but he'd convince her that he was right. And that if one had to make a choice, then without question it was better to be a shepherd than a sheep.)

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Author's Note: This fic was inspired by slow-burner friendship fics featuring a realistic and sympathetic kid!Tom that keep him in character. Specific shout out to Addendum: He is Also a Liar by Ergott for the wonderfully developed pre-Hogwarts friendship. Birds of a Feather is both an ode and a spiritual successor.

I have attempted to make the story feel like it is set in Britain of the 1930's, with references to period culture and attitudes. Please remember that Tom's perspectives and personality are not reflections of the author's personal viewpoints.

If you notice any typos, story-breaking anachronisms or Americanisms, drop a comment!