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TITLE: Faded Grey

AUTHOR: Relala

BETA: lady of scarlet

FANDOM STATUS: Fanon

WARNING: Second Person

None of them are old enough to remember, to have been part of it all, but somehow it always comes up in the all the conversations--always--and you begin to feel as if you have been rejected by some sort of fancy club. When you go to school it seems as if a person's surname has become more important to little children than such things have been for any generation that came before yours.

It's not, of course, that being Muggle-born or having a Pure-blood status really matters anymore. No, it's all about who your parents are these days. It's all about how well known your parents are for their deeds in the final battle at Hogwarts and about who's the son or daughter of a hero and who's the child of the villains.

Or, in your case, it's about who's recognizable as the son of some of the best known heroes.

"Wow, I thought it was just a lie when they told me that Lily Potter was on the train," one of the older years says. "There have been rumours but no one has any proof. So you're her, right? Harry Potter's only daughter?"

You turn your head away from your best friend and her admirer, pretending to be uninterested in the conversation as you stare at yourself in the glass reflection in the compartment window. You cringe at what you find. With your chocolate brown eyes and fizzy caramel hair you are anything but the stereotypical Weasley so it's really no wonder that this boy does not recognize you as the son of Ronald Weasley.

In truth you are more like your mother, Hermione Granger, in both your looks and your brilliance. You are awkward and you know what it is like to live in a world behind a giant piece of glass, gazed at but never acknowledged as a human being.

It's funny how history has a way of repeating itself.

You huddle with the other students in the corridor, watching their lips as they tremble and send puffs of white breath into the air, and even in your own House you feel so very out of place. You are a Weasley and you think that even without the red hair you stand out against the backdrop of their sea of green and silver robes.

Who was that hat trying to kid anyway? You do not belong in Slytherin. Hufflepuff would have been fine because you are loyal. Ravenclaw would have been wonderful because you are a genius, and as a last resort Gryffindor would have been alright because everyone else in your family has been one for centuries; but a Slytherin you are not.

You are a social outcast, fitting in with nothing and no one. Even your own sister, your smart and beautiful sister, in her Ravenclaw colours walks past you in the halls without a word of greeting. Without so much as a nod of acknowledgement.

"Rose!" you call, waving your chubby hand back and forth wildly. "Do you want to go to the library together after lunch? I was wondering if you could help me with my--"

Rose walks right past you, her brown eyes held straight forwards, gazing hard at something that isn't there. She ignores you and you feel her coldness fill the room like the glares of the Slytherins when they call you Griffin-Dork or the biting chill of the dungeon air right in mid-winter.

She does not care for you any more than she would care for a slug that she had to use for her potions ingredients. No one in the school does.

You don't belong as a Weasley and you don't belong in Slytherin. In fact, with all the extra time you have to spend on your charms and spells you are starting to wonder if you belong anywhere, especially anywhere near Hogwarts school.

You learn what the word "leper" means when people stop talking to you altogether, avoiding your gaze as if it were poison and jerking their hands out of the way when you reach for an extra quill in Muggle Studies.

It actually makes you pause for a second, makes you examine your hands and fingers and nails for some sign of a disease that you might have caught in Care Of Magical Creatures when you touched one of those horse things that the other children could not see.

But, no, you learn that it's just that you are too weird with your eager teacher's pet attitude and too much of an idiot with your charms that always backfire to be tolerated by normal society. One of the actual definitions of a leper is "somebody who is ignored or disliked by the rest of society" and you truly feel that this is what you have become as you start to hide away in the library, in the bathroom stalls, in the empty classrooms just to avoid others.

It's alright, you figure, because they are doing the same things to you by saying that the seats next to them are taken or that it's a secret club meeting in Hogsmeade and that you have to be a member to get in but membership isn't open.

You learn that things are easier for everyone if you just let them ignore you and if you go on ignoring them right back. Soon, you are having little if no contact with the other students outside the classroom and that's just fine with you. It's almost as if you have signed a contract that stipulates that you shall stay in the library if they promise not to outright tease or bully you.

The contract works. Your life is no longer the living Hell that it once was even if it's only made up of books and paper and ink. You're a strong creature, too proud to admit you are desperately lonely, brown eyes held forwards and ink stains on your lips as you move down the halls with your shoes clacking loudly on the stone floor.

The Death and Life of Tom Riddle is the book that you have signed out today and it budges and bounces underneath your thin arms and you feel your stomach drop because there's a tiny voice in the back of your head that tells you you're doing something wrong. You actually rush up to your dorm and hide it away under your bed because you are so afraid that you'll be caught red handed in the act of reading it and that they will turn you over to the teachers.

You wonder, without really meaning to, if that's why you decided to go about reading it. If you've taken this book out just to get that little thrill of danger that happens every time you trail your fingertips over the cover as if in a lover's caress.

You are barely living anymore. Oh, you eat and you breathe but you don't laugh or, well, do much of anything. So perhaps you are looking for a near-life-experience when you see that name and it hits you that there's a lure to the Dark Arts, there's a certain appeal to Lord Voldemort and everything that he's done because he knew what he wanted and he took it.

There's something admirable in that, you think. A man with that kind of solid ambition and vision just needs to be respected.

You're frightened that your thoughts are twisted and sick, disgusting and just slightly mental, but Tom Riddle was a man of greatness even if it was evil greatness. It's undeniable really that any wizard had as much a hold on magical society like he once did.

You're supposed to be a hero not a villain, though, and you try and tell yourself this as you get sucked farther and farther into the world of past deeds of good and evil. You've always wanted power, a taste of what it's like to be important, and you're not so sure that there's anything wrong with hurting people to get what you want.

After all, don't they hurt you for no reason?

It's the tattered old picture of Tom Riddle that sticks in your head, the one at the front of the book that shows him with his best golden boy smile with the Head Boy badge pinned to his collar and the caption underneath that reads"TOM RIDDLE (17) WHO WAS SOON TO BECOME WHO WE NOW KNOW AS LORD VOLDEMORT."

The picture is faded grey like the knowledge of good and evil inside your head and you can't help but be amazed that this golden boy, this young man who appears to be such a goody two-shoes, is the person who slaughtered thousands of people. Tom Riddle, the Prefect. Tom Riddle the Head Boy. Tom Riddle the Dark Lord.

Tom who--like you--had the lines between good and evil fade to grey and perhaps even farther as he decided to claim what he thought was rightfully his. You wonder if it was so wrong, all the things he did. Didn't he have his justifications?

The thought swirls around your head like a dancer, your reasoning and your questions twirling about so swiftly you can't catch a hold on the skirts of reality. You are like a person put onto the dance floor without a single lesson to your name and you don't know just how to go about explaining what you are struggling so hard with.

Does not murder have a justification under certain circumstances? If a person hurts you are you not allowed under claim of self-defence to hurt them back? If something is stolen from you are you not allowed to use reasonable force to get what is yours back?

You are a smart person, of course, the brightest wizard of your year to quote your mother and your father and your teachers who have all taken a liking to quoting a dead man. You know how to debate things intelligently and how to flip the coin because each story has more than one side. You just wish that you had a another person to speak about this with because you also know that there is only a thin line between genius and insanity and you have been left all alone inside your head and you see eye to eye with Lord Voldemort.

You need someone to talk to but instead you are stuck sitting in the library, pondering your questions while the rest of the students ignore you and you ignore them. It's part of your contract and you are too afraid to speak to anyone about this lest you be considered even more of a freak than you already are.

So while they are all off laughing in the corridors or drinking secretly in Hogsmeade you are busy wishing someone would talk to you about the differences between black and white in a grey world. No one comes and talks to you though, of course, and you are left to wonder if this will be part of your justification for killing them all one day.

History has a funny way of repeating itself.

THE END

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