The Fault In Our Names

Part 1

Flash Back Ends,

Shelby learned love the hard way. As soon as he had bedded her, he packed his bags and left. She had missed him, but the awful feeling inside that told her he was a bad man was enough to stifle her loneliness. Thats why, years later, when odd things started happening around London that no one could explain, she knew that it was him. Tom Riddle.

She had debated whether to shield her son from the cruel reality or not, and decided on telling him the hard and painful truth. Except for that one little detail that connected Tom to his father. Only today, did she feel that he was ready to know. Obviously, she was wrong about that.

Tom's POV

"Oh mum, it all make sense now, why you've always been shady about who my dad is, how you knew so much about Voldie, how you would sometimes start crying when you told me those stories," I stopped and smirked. I stopped talking for a while, thinking things through. After about a minute, I asked, in a low whisper, "hey mum, do you think I might be magic too?" As my mother looked into my eyes she could see a little spark of hope, and at that moment she knew what to say.

"I think," she began, "that you could." She smiled, and neither of us spoke again for the rest of the evening.

Later that year, in the summer, a strange letter arrived at our door step. I first found it while emptying the rubbish. It was my job every day to take the rubbish out, and, unlike most 12 year olds, I actually did it every day, meaning there wasn't anything to cover the strange letter, and I saw it straight away. I took it out, and looked at it. Unlike all the other letters and bills in the bin, it wasn't stained with the sauce from the chili con carne me and my mum had eaten the night before. How odd, I thought. Seeing as it has my name on it, I decided that there would be no harm in opening it, because it was intended for me. Just as I pulled out the paper from inside the envelope, my mum walked into the kitchen.

"whats that?" she asked, not really paying attention to what I was holding, because it was still before 10 in the morning and she hadn't had her coffee yet, so she wasn't really functioning.

"Its a letter. For me" I said.

My mum looked surprised. "Really?" she asked, "I must've thrown it in the bin by mistake, sorry Tom,"

"Yeah, yeah its okay" I replied, not really listening to what my mum was saying and I read and then reread the letter.

"mum," I slowly said, after a few seconds, "I think, I think this is a letter from a magic school."

My mum froze. For a second, I wasn't sure if I should start thinking up apologies or start to celebrate. But then her straight face melted into a smile, and I let out the breath I had been holding in.

All at once, she started to talk quickly, the way she did when she was discussing things with people from work. "Right then! we have no time to lose do we? we'll head into the center tomorrow and I'm quite certain we'll be able to get all your supplies in diagon alley, but I'm not sure... I know they have cauldrons, books, of course, they have wands, but we don't have any magical money, so I'm not sure how we will buy all of that, but we can just ask people. They're very helpful you know." Shelby stopped blabbing on as she saw my face. I had just got a letter to a school I never knew existed, and now my mum was casually talking about magic as if she had lived with it all her life! Of course I should be shocked.