Bookbinding ( Tom Riddle x Myrtle Warren )

Chapter 2: Rice Pudding

Lord Voldemort's life was a disaster.

London, never a city able to cope with the heat, was sweltering that summer. By the middle of August, the orphanage was unbearable, its walls seeming to sweat, its air thick with the grimy stench of too many poor and worthless children crammed into one place.

He spent most of his time wandering the city, as was his habit, ignoring the hole in the sole of his loafers, and the old boys in the Home Guard who blustered around the place, and the easy women whose boyfriends were getting shot to ribbons in Europe and who were looking for a good time. He helped himself to treats from shop shelves and market stalls that Mrs Cole's ration book would never have had a chance of stretching to, relying on a charming smile to lull shopkeepers into a false sense of security and an impressive time over a hundred yards to make a quick exit if a policeman spotted him. He read his notes on Horcruxes, and got ahead on NEWT work, and got absolutely nothing for a perfect baker's dozen Outstandings on his OWLs because nobody at Wool's knew he was a wizard, they didn't have any money for celebration gifts anyway, and Mrs Cole was generally of the opinion that he was possessed by a demon. He would have said the same thing about her, if he spent enough time in her company to do so.

Instead, he left the orphanage each morning at the crack of dawn, returned for his meagre dinner, and then slithered off to his bedroom, sometimes allowing himself the treat of making Billy trip over his own feet and fall down the stairs on his way.

And he spent each day in walking.

And he mused on the question of failure.

There were no two ways about it. The Chamber of Secrets business had been a disaster. The petrified Mudbloods had been restored to full health without any lasting damage and everything in the school was right as rain again. He had spent the past year assuring the Knights that he was the greatest of his line to walk the halls of Hogwarts since Slytherin himself, that he would eradicate the filth which was staining the castle and watch it rise again to its former glory. And in the end the only thing he'd managed to kill were some roosters.

And even that had been harder than he was expecting.

He had been distracted. That was the problem. He had been distracted by Myrtle, and her talk of the school being closed, and the fear that had given him about having to go back to Wool's permanently, and the fact that she was truly abysmal at Transfiguration.

(Dumbledore's fault, he was sure.)

It was bizarre, he reprimanded himself constantly, that somebody so unprepossessing should be occupying such a colossal amount of his time.

She had some hidden depths, of course. She had a cruel streak he rather liked - she had very nearly sent Igor Bagman to his death when she hexed his broom, and had merely shrugged when he pointed this out. She listened to him adoringly, eyes gleaming in a devoted way he'd never managed to coax from the Knights of Walpurgis. She had become doggedly loyal from just the briefest burst of acknowledgement. She had introduced him to Witch Weekly - to which he had taken out a subscription in Abraxas' name - and its plethora of macabre potions recipes, one of which he had used to burn the tedious Mudblood who sat next to him in Herbology's skin clean off. She beamed at him from the Ravenclaw table every mealtime and was delighted to receive an imperious nod of the head in return, which he felt certain would be a mannerism he retained in his dark lord days. She continually brought little things to him - the magnificent chocolates she had foisted on him in October had been followed up with a steady supply of chocolate frogs and cauldron cakes, which he was growing quite fond of - and never seemed upset that he offered her nothing in return.

Well, except for attention. He was having to dispense huge amounts of that in order to keep her under control. She seemed to exist in a state of perpetual agony even he couldn't comprehend, and he'd grown up in a detestable slum surrounded by Muggle idiocy. The fact that her enemies had been so easy to eradicate didn't seem to have done anything to relieve her of her misery. Every other word she said was little more than tedious gossip, or whining about how unfair her life was, or wittering about her obnoxious Muggle family. He was sure that listening to it was causing his prodigious brain to atrophy.