Dear, Ms.Riddle

1 ~ Childhood

I didn't have the best childhood. It wasn't really even a childhood, when I think about it. It was darwinism. Only the strong can survive. My mum hated Darwin though. My mum hated most people really, so I don't think poor Darwin would've taken it personally.

I grew up under the floorboards of my mother's workplace. I was a secret. Why was I a secret? I never really questioned it. It was just accepted because it was life. I did not even think to question it.

My mum was a beautiful woman with dead eyes. And I mean, truly dead eyes. When she came to visit me in my space under the floor, she would sit down on the dusty boards and just shake her head at me with those dead eyes.
"Why didn't I just kill you." I remember her saying once. I was four.

My mum wasn't a beater type though. She had a heart of gold if you could get through the iron and steel around it. She loved me. That I know. She loved me very much. She's dead now though. She died a long time ago. Anyways... my mum was a housemaid. She did everything everybody else didn't want to do. Scrubbed the floors, cleaned the bathrooms, polished the sliver and so forth. And she was very good at this job. Trouble was, my mum was a squib in a world of witches and wizards. Couldn't cast a single spell. So she did all her work by hand. The wizarding community took pity on her so she got by on small jobs. It was only until she came to work at the mansion, did she decide to stay.

Mum told me the story of how I came to be in blunt detail when I was teeny. She was honest in her ways and didn't mind as long as I didn't go getting any mad ideas in my brain. She said she had come to work for a powerful man and dark wizard. She said his name was Voldemort. On her first day, she was tending to the outside gardens when she saw him sitting in the courtyard, shrouded in a long black cloak. He called her over to him and she came. He asked her why she looked so sad and she replied, "Because I'm destitute sir."

He snickered at that. "What family do you come from?" He asked.

"I don't know sir. I'm an orphan."

"And how does that make you feel?"

"Apathetic. And relieved."

"Relieved?"

"If I knew my parents, they would surely look down upon me because I cannot use magic. They would be ashamed. I'm relieved I don't have that pain."

"You traded that pain for the pain of abandonment." He said.

"Abandonment can be turned into strength. Dishonor is tricker."

He liked my mum. She didn't speak much and when she did, she was honest and true with her words. She told me that he was a horrible man and had killed hundreds but he was the only man who had ever treated her like an equal. He thought of himself as above everyone except for her. Maybe it's because he saw too much of himself in her.

He had a bit of an obsession with my mum. Deep down inside the remnants of his soul, I think he may have loved her. That love was shadowed by his goals and ambitions in the end. Also by the fact that he found love to be an alien concept and couldn't even realize his own feelings. My mum was just a piece of his life that was considered a weakness. But he couldn't kill her. He tried once. My mum was cooking and turned around to see a wand pointed right at her chest. She didn't beg. She didn't flinch. She smiled. Her dead eyes filled with tears and she smiled. Then he lowered his wand and walked away. He couldn't kill someone who wanted to die was his excuse. It was a poor pitiful excuse for a dark wizard who had terrorized the magical world.

My mum hid her pregnancy very well. Though she couldn't cast a spell, she worked very well with potions and used them to help conceal the signs. My mum read a lot and used every bit of knowledge she could come by. Even though she had never had a wizarding education, she was a self taught genius. She had me in the basement by herself and gave me potions to keep me from crying. She then found a small space between the 2nd and 1st floor for me. Only about 4 feet tall and 10 feet in width, it was more of a forgotten storage space than a room. I was raised there. My mum never told him that she was pregnant. She knew he would harm me or even kill me. He cherished her but not her unknown heritage and squib nature. He didn't need me and he didn't want me. She needed me and wanted me. She needed me to live.