Harry Potter One-shots

Getting her back (Tom Riddle)

Being an orphan is not exactly a pleasant situation. Not in your case anyway. You don't have good people taking care of you, nor roomates that are friendly and to whom you can talk to. You actually don't have any. The most ridiculous thing you've ever heard was that if you were a good girl, the people that were kind enough to adopt a kid and came in your orphanage would adopt you. As if anyone would want you. Who would want the outcast of the orphanage? The freak?

That's what the people in this dreaded orphanage called you. However, you weren't the only one called that. There was a boy, that had suffered the same fate of isolation as you. His name, Tom Riddle. You had come to the orphanage when you were seven, to a nice environment.

Every child and matron of the orphanage had come to the front room to greet you. You, being a young girl then, having no siblings, wanted to play with someone, to just have fun. Your gaze had passed the girls with the smiles on their faces, it had passed the boys who were looking at you mischievously, and had landed on a boy at the back of the group of the other children. He was the only one looking at you blankly, and you noticed that no one was next to him, not even the matrons. You didn't know the boy, but, the fact that he was alone was something that you couldn't just ignore.

You had brushed past the girls and boys in the front of the group, until you reached the end of the group, and stopped just in front of the lonely boy. Everyone stopped talking and smiling as you looked at the boy with a small smile on your face. He raised his head to look at you, and even if his face was expressionless, you could see in his eyes confusion. He couldn't understand why you were there.

"Hello." you had said, smiling slightly at the boy. You had put your hand in front of you, to offer him a handshake, like your mother had told you to do when meeting a stranger. The boy had looked from your eyes to your outstretched hand, and after some seconds of hesitation, he had given you his hand. He had shaken it once firmly before letting it fall, a smile lighting the corner of your lips as you had looked at the raven haired boy with the dark green eyes.

"Hello to you too." he had said.

You were given a room all to yourself, next to the boy's you had learnt was named Tom, and you had thought that maybe this could be worse. However, the next day wasn't pleasant to you. The children, seeing you and Tom interact with no difficulty, started calling you a freak as well, and the matrons didn't smile at you anymore. Confused, you had contacted Tom. The boy had told you that they were afraid, and that's why they called you that. You had believed him. He was your friend, after all.

As the years passed, it was obvious to you that, indeed, people were afraid of you. You didn't know why, however. You had done nothing wrong, yet it seemed that everyone thought you were the one in the wrong. Everyone but Tom, that is. As you lived next door, it wasn't a rarity to find one of you in the other's room, not even during nighttime. There were nights that you had nightmares, and you often woke up screaming. Seconds after you screamed, Tom would barge into your room, looking at you with slight concern on his face.

He would ask you how you were, and you, typically, would be too scared to sleep alone after the nightmare. You would ask him to sleep with you for the night, Tom would stand stiff for a moment, and you, embarrassed, would turn your eyes away from him. He would agree not a second after you averted your gaze, and a huge grin would appear on your face as you would move to the side of the wall. Tom would lay down next to you, under the covers, and he would open his arms, letting you crawl into his embrace.

It wasn't uncommon to find you in Tom's room in the morning either. You would often wake up, slightly earlier than the rest of the people in the orphanage, and when that happened, you would walk to Tom's room. You would open the door, trying to move silently, but it would screech every time you tried to get in, and the boy, being a light sleeper, would immediately wake up. He would shoot you an unimpressed look, and you would smile innocently at him before getting in and closing the door behind you. You would walk to his bed, Tom would sit up, and both of you would turn to the window of his room. You would look at the dawn of the sun, no words spoken, until it was time for breakfast, and you would once again head down to your slightly separate lives.