Oddities

Tom sat, silent and observing. He was always observing, and because he was silent, he often learned a lot of things because people didn't realize he was paying such close attention. He rarely asked questions right out; he had learned that people usually didn't bother answering the questions of children honestly if they deigned to answer at all.

His habit of being silent always bothered Mrs. Cole, the matron. She knew how to handle all of the other children because they were all average and the same...and children. But Tom...Tom was like a little mini-adult. She didn't know how to treat him, and so she often just ignored him instead.

Tom never seemed to play with the other children. It wasn't that he thought that he was above them, but their little games never really interested him. He loved to learn though.

He had been a funny, silent baby. Mrs. Cole had thought that as soon as he turned into a toddler that would change. But instead he'd simply grown from an oddly silent baby into an oddly silent toddler. For a long time Mrs. Cole had thought he was mute because he didn't start talking at the normal age. He never went through the stage of learning to talk through failed attempts with adults helping him along; oh no, right from the first time he had spoken it had been a complete...simple but nonetheless complete...sentence. Mrs. Cole now figured it was just because he wanted the talking thing mastered perfectly before trying it. He was like that with everything, never wanting help from anybody...probably thinking they didn't care. Which, sadly, was often true, but most orphans didn't figure that out so quickly.

He had followed her around, but instead of clambering for her attention as a normal following kind of child would, he simply followed and watched and observed. And then one day, the first thing he ever spoke was, "What are you doing?"

It had nearly given Mrs. Cole a heart attack. "What?!" she gasped.

Toddler Tom stared at her levelly and repeated, "What are you doing?"

"What do you mean, what am I doing?" she said in irritation to cover up her fright and astonishment. "I'm reading."

"What's reading?" he asked solemnly.

She rolled her eyes, considering telling him that it wasn't something he would understand, and then questioned whether that was true or not. After all, he had just spoken a complete sentence on his first try.

"These things are letters. They form words. Words are what you say when you speak. So it's like speaking recorded permanently."

Tom looked to be pondering this, and Mrs. Cole returned to her task, thinking the thing was finished when once again Tom interrupted her thoughts. "I want to read," he said.

Mrs. Cole stared at him. "You'll learn to read eventually," she said dismissively.

"When?" he queried forcefully.

Mrs. Cole sighed. "Here, I'll show you the ABCs. If you manage to learn all those, then I'll teach you to read. If not you'll have to wait and do it with everyone else." She thought Tom looked a little annoyed at this, but he remained silent and attentive as she quickly ran through the ABCs to placate him.

She handed him the primer and said, "When you've got all that down, come back to learn more."

Since she'd been so haphazard about it, she expected that Tom would try and get bored, and that would be the end of it until everyone else learned to read. But this was Tom Riddle, and she soon learned never to apply things of normal children to him.

A couple of days later Tom came back to her and held the primer out to her. Mrs. Cole stared at it, and Tom said simply, "Now teach me to read."

Mrs. Cole raised her eyebrows. "You really know all the alphabet already?" she asked skeptically.

Tom nodded angrily and proceeded to prove it to her. "Now teach me to read," he said again, forcefully.

Mrs. Cole raised her eyebrows again, but it was different this time in that it wasn't skeptically raising eyebrows; it was an "I'm the adult, and you're just a child; why are you being so demanding," kind of raised eyebrow.

Tom looked instantly remorseful and said humbly, "Please teach me to read."

So she did. It couldn't hurt anything to possibly give him something that would keep him out of her hair for good. And so it did.

After he had learned to read, he greedily read through every book in the orphanage, even the ones she wouldn't have thought would interest a child. Every time a new (new to him since most books coming in were one people had discarded) book was given to the orphanage, he would claim it. Not that most of the other children usually cared because they didn't care so much for learning and reading...it was just something they were required to do because people thought that they at least needed to give orphans a minimum of education.

He read the books so many times he probably had them memorized, and his voraciousness in acquiring knowledge did not endear him to the other children. In fact, as children will, they adopted him as an object to be picked on. But name calling didn't bother him, what could they say of him that didn't apply to them as well, unless it was something he actually considered a compliment?

Annoyed at his consistently ignoring their attempts at a new form of fun, one day the children decided to attack his beloved books rather than attacking Tom.

Mrs. Cole wasn't there to see it, and none of the children would really speak of what happened, but that was the first of the odd events that continued to happen. And every time they were connected to Tom.

After that, the other children left Tom and his books alone...so they never interacted unless Tom decided he wanted to come and mingle with them. But the relationships between him and the other children were always tense; they didn't relax in the presence of Tom. And whenever a new kid came to the orphanage, it wasn't long before the other kids educated him or her on "the way things are".

While inside this hurt Tom, he decided that he would rather just spend most of him time with his books anyway...the other kids were just stupid.

After Edward Nibley had attempted to set the book on fire, Tom couldn't say what exactly had happened. It was as though his emotion had surged out and caused the fire to catch on to the other boy. But that was impossible, right?

He was so different from the other kids...but he couldn't help but feel that his mother would have loved him anyway. She probably would have been proud and called him special. That was what Tom told himself over and over again in the dead of night: you're not weird or odd; you're special, and you're unique.

Disclaimer: Just remembered I forgot to say that the disclaimer counts for all chapters of the whole story.