Letters to Walpurgis

1943. AU It was supposed to be Tom Riddle's sixth year at Hogwarts. A few more months then he would 17 and be free of the Muggle World forever. No one expected that he would be drafted. Grindelwald's campaign doesn't seem as righteous as it did before.

Whatever he had expected to find when he went back to the orphanage for the summer, Tom Riddle decided, this wasn't it. The usual attempts at harassment from the other orphans, perhaps; a newcomer that he would have to scare away so that he or she wouldn't poke around his room. He'd expected a quiet summer, with less-than-appetizing food and noisy, crying children, an annoying but necessary circumstance.

Being summoned to Mrs. Cole's room wasn't unusual—she liked to be informed when he arrived, of course, individuals as "strange" as him had to be kept an eye on—but hearing that it was because he had a visitor was unusual. He'd frowned, dropped his trunk off in his room and gone to her office. Another boy was slumped against the wall outside her door, as pale as paper as he stared at a letter he held in his hand.

Tom gave the other boy a curious glance before knocking.

"Come in," the matron's familiar voice rasped. Tom went in.

Mrs. Cole was sitting behind her desk, tipping a bottle of gin and looking more flushed than she usually did, almost defeated. Beside her stood a man in military uniform, a number of glistening badges and medals adorning his chest. He held his hat in the crook of his elbow.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle?" the man asked, his voice blunt and to the point.

"Yes, that would be myself, sir."

"This is for you."

The man handed over a crisp envelope and, reluctantly, Tom accepted it. Mrs. Cole eyed it like it would explode any given second.

Nodding sharply, the man turned his head to Mrs. Cole. "I'll be off now, ma'am. That will be all. Be sure to remind the boys that they will be expected to report by next week."

Mrs. Cole made a noise that resembled a strangled sob and waved her hand wordlessly, bowing her head to rest it in one of her hands. The military officer clicked his heels, saluted, and left.

Tom frowned at the door as it closed and turned back to the orphanage matron. "Mrs. Cole…" he began.

She waved her hand, abruptly cutting him off. "Read it here, in your room, I don't care. Just don't come shoutin' at me; it's out of my hands, Tom."

His eyes dropped to the letter in his hands, which was deceptively innocent. Swallowing thickly, his stomach roiling with dread, he ran his finger along the seal, tearing it open.

Selective Service System

Order to Report

Preinduction Physical Examination

1 June 1943

His Majesty the King,

To: Mr. TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE,

Greeting:

You are hereby directed to report for preinduction physical examination at…

He read through the letter quickly, then blinked at the signature and seal at the bottom of the paper, not truly believing what he had just read. So he read it again, then a third time. Behind the letter was a long form that he would have to fill in with all his personal information. First came disbelief, then horror. The paper crumpled as his hold on it tightened. Something like hysteria bubbled in his throat, choking him.

"W-what kind of joke is this?" He stammered out.

Mrs. Cole tossed back another tumbler of gin. "I wish it were, but the other boys old enough got the same ruddy letter."

"They can't draft me! For Merl-for God's sake, I'm still in school!" he shouted.

Mrs. Cole scowled at him. "Don't yell at me! You think I don' know that, boy? As it turns out your birth certificate has the wrong date on it and I don't know what kind of program goes on at that boarding school of yours, but as far as the records say you haven't been registered in any public or private school since you were eleven. So they're going to take you, like it or not."

There was a ringing, finalizing tone to her voice that went straight down to his bones. Chilled, he fled, flinging the door open before him with a resounding bang. Eric Whalley was still leaning against the wall, staring blankly at the paper in his hand—a perfect duplicate of the one in Tom's fingers—as the young wizard dashed past.

He reached his room in record time and threw his trunk open, extracting parchment and a quill and began writing furiously to the Ministry of Magic. Black ink splattered and smuggled over his fingers, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

He rushed the Diagon Alley with the letter and paid more than he really ought have for an owl at the post office. For the rest of the day, and most of the night, he paced. The reply, brought by a messenger boy the very next morning, was less than what he'd hoped for. In so many words, it told him that there was nothing the Ministry could or would do, and if he tried to escape his civic duty to his country, Aurors would hunt him down and snap his wand before pushing him into the trenches.

He was being drafted. And there was nothing he could do about it.

He briefly entertained the thought of calling in a favor, sending a letter to Avery or Malfoy or Lestrange to get them to bribe him out of the undesirable situation, but the thought was all too quickly dissolved. His Knights were his followers, not his friends, and because their respect for him was based on fear, they would be all too eager to leave him to the wolves and not worry about having to suffer his anger ever again, no matter what favors they owed. The ability to threaten them was outside of his present abilities. The fact that he was a half-blood only would make them happier to see the back of him. He remembered too well their open ridicule of his hazy heritage a few years prior.

Tom had never regretted not making actual friends before.

Accompanying him into the military were Billy Stubbs, Eric Whalley, and Dennis Bishop. Stupid muggles the boys may have been, but even they weren't dense enough to not know why it was they who were being drafted and not another batch of adolescents.

'Because we're orphans, and nobody will miss us if we die.'

A painful lump formed in his throat, and he tightened his hands into fists.

'I don't want to die.'

It still didn't seem quite real, and he doubted it would until they had him on the battlefield. The possibility of him dying was uncomfortably close. He'd have to find a way to protect himself.

Eric Whalley seemed to have responded to his conscript letter in a similar manner to Tom: he'd grown quiet, his face always ashen now, eyebrows furrowed in a way that gave him a look of constant apprehension. Tom came across the older boy praying at the most unusual times of day, and found he couldn't recall if Eric had been even remotely religious before.

Dennis Bishop wasn't taking it half as hard. He was not thrilled, per se, but resigned to his fate and determined to make the best of it. Billy Stubbs was actually eager, and spent the next several days grinning ear-to-ear. He seemed to believe that he would come out of the war some sort of hero.

Tom tried to memorize every defensive spell he could—offense was hardly a problem. He hoped it would be enough. It had to be enough.

Doomsday seemed to jump forward though time to claim him. As he'd never even had to unpack his trunk, which contained all his worldly belongings, Tom had undergone slightly less hassle than the other three boys when it came to preparing to leave. There was no grandiose farewell, nor had Tom expected there to be, but he was surprised that Mrs. Cole pressed a five pound note onto all four of them.

When the military vehicle paused at the gate, she embraced Eric, Billy, and Dennis and said her farewells, and they departed, but she paused at him.

Mrs. Cole placed a hand on his shoulder. "Be safe, Tom," she said, surprising him. "I know you've never liked me, and trust me the feeling is quite mutual, but I've known you your whole life an-and I don't want to receive a letter telling me that you're dead, understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said quietly.

Her eyes shone and she seemed to struggle with herself for a moment before throwing her arms around him. Tom stiffened in shock, eyes going wide. Mrs. Cole only embraced him for a moment, however, and quickly pulled away to tend to younger orphans. Tom stared at her back for a brief moment then left.

A man in uniform stood holding the car door open, inside which Billy, Eric, and Dennis already sat. Tom's trunk was loaded in the back and the man shut the door when he stepped into the automobile. Eric shook a bit in his seat, cupping a lighter to the cigarette he held between his lips. He inhaled and offered one to Dennis, who accepted. Billy declined, and Tom, who was more reluctantly offered a fag, refused also.

"Unbelievable, huh?" Dennis said, exhaling a curly stream of silver. "A thousand other blokes in all London and the numbers that come out of the hat are ours."

"Other blokes got families," Eric said, his voice oddly bitter.

"Don't take no genius to figure that out," Billy agreed. A moment of silence followed and Tom realized that they were waiting for him to speak.

"Are you afraid of dying?" he asked softly.

Eric pulled on his cigarette again, and it seemed to cure his trembling fingers. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty scared. Nothing I can do about it though, can I?"

Billy jerked his head to the side. "A bit. I don't intend to get myself killed, but… damn, those Nazi bastards will have to run me over with a tank before I go down and stay down. I don't know about Riddle, but I've got a girl to go home to, unlike you two."

"I'm not afraid," Dennis said. His voice was quiet, almost serene. "There are worse things than death."

Tom pressed his mouth into a thin line, knowing that the comment was directed at him, even if the other two didn't.

"I dunno about you boys, but I'm going to do everything I can to stay out of the air force." Eric said.

"Why do you say that?" Tom asked.

All three boys looked over at him. Feeling put-on-the-spot, he crossed his arms defensively.

"That's right, you're always at your fancy boarding school," Eric mumbled, at first to himself. "Well, you know about the Blitz, right? It's bad enough having that on top of us; I don't want to be one of the guys that has to do that, even if it's to those bastard Germans. There's women and children and old men over there who've got nothing to do with the Nazis and-and… God, I know what its like. I don't want to have to do that."

The other two boys nodded grimly in agreement.

"I just hope they keep us together." Billy said.

Tom's eyebrows rose, as did the Eric's and Dennis'.

"What?" the young man asked, ruffled, "I may hate your bloody guts, Riddle, but I know I can at least trust you to watch my back, even if your only motivation is to keep from having to carry my stretcher. It'd be a shame if your noble hands got splattered with my filthy innards, wouldn't it?" Eric and Dennis snickered.

Tom grimaced at the unpleasant image that rose to the forefront of his mind at that. "No, Stubbs, the shame would be having to rummage through the prior morning's breakfast to find the damned bullet. Waste of good food."

To his surprise, they laughed.

"Good God, he has a sense of humor! How novel is that?" Eric chuckled. "This whole drafting thing might not be your death sentence after all, Riddle. You might actually end up a decent bloke by the end of this!"

"I might just second that," Billy said.

"Yeah, we'll see," Dennis said. He had an eyebrow raised in Tom's direction.

Tom smirked at them. "Don't count on it."

A/N: Can you say "epiphany?" This popped into my head super suddenly and I was immediately overwhelmed with a huge smile and giggles (I now fully understand the saying "felt like she'd been hit with a brick"). Because HOLY CUSS WHY HASN'T ANYONE DONE THIS BEFORE? 1939-1945 is WW2! Tom Riddle goes to school from 1938-1945! Don't you guys have ANYTHING but romance on the brain? Come on! Tom Riddle's era has so much potential and you're wasting it on kisses and smut and semi-self-inserts! Admittedly, I like those too, and I understand the need for the school setting, really I do, but really, expand your minds! How many Post-Hogwarts fics with Tom are there? Only two or three! There's a big, fat, 30-year gap in his history and you can't fill it with ANYTHING?

Okay, mini-rant over.

A bit sheepishly, I admit that this is not perfectly historically accurate. 16 is actually a bit of a stretch for Tom to be drafted, but if I went ahead and let him be 17 then it'd be a whole lot easier for him to confund/obliviate the officials, and, well, I couldn't let him do that (he has the skillz). At 16 he could probably be a volunteer for the Home Guard (also known as Dad's Army), but we all know Tom wouldn't ever volunteer for anything if he didn't get something out of it (a rather big something). I also did it because if I just drafted him in '44 there really wouldn't be much time for him to witness and experience a good deal of the war's grit and grime (which he totally should have to endure).

Also: I could not find a copy anywhere online of the British conscription notices. I found several American ones, and a few others from other countries, but somehow not one from England. If any Brits out there know where I could find one, let me know and I'd be super glad to stick it in here, yeah? Info on how getting Conscientious objector status would be welcome too, because I really couldn't find much anything on the process of that, which is why I skipped it here.

This fic currently stands as a oneshot. However, it will later be continued.

Much love,

Megii