Extra Ordinary (Riddle Era)

Chapter 22

Six years earlier.

From the moment he was old enough to know anything worth knowing at all, Tom Riddle knew two very important things. The first was that he had been born with nothing. And the second was that unless he did something about it, he would die with nothing too.

The first of these things was not strictly true and Tom knew it, even then. The truth was that Tom Riddle had been born with exactly two things: a mother, who hadn't lived long enough to meet him, and a name, the only relic left by a family who had never even bothered to come looking for him, despite his mother's deathbed insistence that they were alive.

Both were, in Tom's not-so-humble opinion, utterly worthless. And besides, it was easier to just say he'd had nothing. He still had nothing. For as long as he'd lived, he'd had nothing. Just like everyone else in this run down orphanage tucked away in the back streets of London had nothing. Because they were nothing. They were names on a piece of paper in the matron's office that would be erased the moment they turned eighteen. They were rations doled out by some government clerk who only cared how many there were. They were the unwanted children from unwanted lives who had been left to figure the rest out on their own.

And because of that nothingness, that worthlessness that came from these lives they'd been handed, Tom knew, deep down in a place he didn't dare look, that they were all the same. That they were ordinary. In the worst way. That no single one of them could ever be better because at their core, they would all be defined by that same awful truth that had dropped them in this quiet, ordinary hell in the first place: they were unwanted. Unneeded. Unloved. And they always would be.

Tom had learned this the hard way. When he'd been little, the orphanage had tried to adopt him out. And when he'd been little, people had been interested. They'd met the matron. They'd met him. They'd called him handsome and the matron had called him intelligent and everything always seemed to be going well. And then they started asking questions. Questions about his family. About his mother. About why he was here and how she had died and what she'd said before then.

And then they left. And he never saw them again.

He wasn't stupid. He knew why they asked. And he knew why they left. Because they wanted to know what exactly had made him so unlovable that even though his mother had sworn he had living family, they'd never once bothered to seek him out. They'd wanted to know why, if he was really as handsome and intelligent and charming as he seemed, he was still here.

And the answer was simple: he was here because he was ordinary. Because however well he did in school, however nice he was to his teacher, however well they brushed his hair and sung his praises, it would never change that simple, terrible fact. It would never make him more than what he was.

And what he was was just another worthless, ordinary child in this worthless, ordinary orphanage, doomed to a worthless, ordinary life.

They made sure he knew it too. The matrons, the teachers, the occasional government official come to inspect the place, always said it. Over and over and over again. Always reminded them that they were normal children. Ordinary children. Like that was supposed to make them feel better. Like that alleviated the hells of this life they'd been dealt. Like it was a compliment meant to separate them from their worthlessness instead of the synonym Tom knew it to be. No one ever told all the other children of the world that they were ordinary. Because it wasn't true. Ordinary was a reminder reserved for the outcasts. The orphans. The unwanted children who stayed unwanted, no matter how hard the staff tried to send them off to other, ordinary homes. Who needed to be put in their place, lest they start thinking their pain made them anything like special. Lest they let those games of pretend where they imagined they were exceptional get to their heads. Lest they start believing all those lies they told themselves to try to make it better when those visiting potential families inevitably walked right back out the door.