[HP Doujin] 1943

Volume [-]: Years Like Water

VolumeOne.AWalktoRemember

1937 ~ 1944

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epocho fin credulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything befor eus, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

——Charles Dickens, ATale of Two Cities. [1]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of faith, it was the epoch of doubt; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; That was the spring of hope, that was the winter of disappointment; we were all heading straight for heaven, we were all heading straight for the opposite.

— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities [2]

【1】Excerpted from ATaleofTwoCities, Charles Dickens, NuVisions Publications, USA, 2010;

[2] Excerpted from "A Tale of Two Cities", written by Charles Dickens, translated by Song Zhaolin, China Translation and Publishing Co., Ltd., first edition in 2010

1. The Waif of Leicester Street

[-], London.

The icy heavy rain washed the dirty and filthy streets, and the accumulated water on the road was mixed with all kinds of garbage and rushed into the sewer, forming black whirlpools one by one.A dead mouse with a broken tail was lying on all fours at the mouth of the sewer, its dirty gray eyes staring blankly at the gray-black sky and the boundless rain.

Under a bridge opening by the River Thames, the stone wall is covered in graffiti of lost and angry punk youth.They sprayed out all kinds of distorted and hideous patterns with paint and insulted the Conservatives, and threw broken beer bottles and stones at the passing students in private school uniforms... They did their best to vent their emptiness and anger on this ruthless The world, but their venting was like punching cotton balls with no response, so they became more angry and more powerless.

Youth is a barren wasteland.When you are stuck in it, you always do whatever you want, you can't see the past or guess the future, and you can't escape this gloomy, long, never-ending cage.

On this rainy and gloomy afternoon, two or three teenagers, wearing wet and dirty coats, stood under the bridge opening by the Thames and took turns smoking a roll of low-quality cigarettes.

I could tell at a glance that the three boys were gangsters from the orphanage around the corner.

The lowlands on both sides of the bridge tunnel are full of dirty water.White garbage bags and rusty oil barrels were discarded in a mess, and the rainwater kept falling on the iron barrels, making a splashing sound.I squatted next to a trash can not far away, watching them silently.I was wearing a baggy gray hoodie with the hood pulled down.The cold wind and rain wet my forehead obliquely and densely, blurring my vision.I blinked, squeezed the rain from my eyelashes, and saw a scrawny boy emerging from the bridge hole and waving his arms at me.

"Hi!" he called to me, in a thick East End accent, "Freak!"

I shrugged my shoulders and tossed my head like a dog, brushing a strand of wet hair out of sight without a sound.

"I know who you are!" he went on yelling at me. "You're the daughter of that drunken pauper in Leicester Street, aren't you?"

I slowly dropped the twisted grass stalk on the ground, rubbed my knees, and stood up.

He looked at me with a smirk on his face.

"Lizzie, isn't it?" He jumped nimbly over the puddle, splashing dirty water all over my face.He grabbed me by the neck, dragged me to him, and asked viciously: "All summer, you have been squatting here and spying on us! What the hell are you trying to do? Report us to the police station? Or do you want to have sex with us?" Share some of this stuff?"

He waved the cigarette in his hand at me.

I broke free from his hand and said contemptuously, "You dirty rats from the orphanage."

"What did you say?" He said furiously, grabbing my hair, "Don't think I won't beat you up just because you are a woman!"

"Don't worry, I won't overestimate the moral standards of people like you." I said sarcastically.

I suspect he didn't even hear what I was saying because a burst of green light shot out of my pocket and hit him right in the stomach.He howled, took two steps back, and fell into the dirty puddle, his long ginger hair mixed with the garbage in the black water, disgusting.

"Damn it!" cried two of his footmen, running towards us to beat me up.They were not so lucky, however, and a few seconds later, they too fell convulsively into the puddle.

I looked at their fallen figures with satisfaction, and rubbed the tip of the slightly warm wand with my right index finger.Beautiful colic, I said to myself.After practicing for a summer vacation, it seems that my silent spell has made great progress.

I know they are newcomers.The last few years, the increasing number of children orphaned by this damn war has filled shelters and orphanages across the country.

I vividly remember that in the summer of [-], the orphanage on Leicester Street was so full that the children had to share a room with three of them.German planes sank relief ships from the United States again and again, and the government had no choice but to watch the fiscal deficit pile up, the inflation worsen, and the black market trade more and more rampant... Women can no longer buy a decent pair of silk stockings and high heels, and people are even willing to exchange a stack of banknotes for a ham and half a pound of flour.People all over the country are struggling, and the orphanages are also struggling. They really can't feed so many sallow and emaciated children. Those annoying nurses and nuns even started door-to-door with donation boxes money.

I don't know how those stupid civil servants in government agencies do things, anyway, when the children who were sent away during the bombing of 4[[-]] started coming back, all the children in the orphanages were taken away. Disturbed, only a few orphans who had been in Leicester Street returned here.Some of the friends I knew since I was a child have also been scattered all over the world, and I have never heard from them, and I have never contacted them in my life.

Beginning at the end of [-], a large number of new orphans were sent here at regular intervals.From time to time, humanitarian agencies also send some Jewish children rescued from the occupied areas. "The registered families are full... no, no, they don't have enough money and food to take in these kids... the nursing homes on the Strand and the orphanages in the suburbs are full too. You must We have to take these homeless children.” Those who sent the children explained over and over again, “God is with us, I believe that the most difficult time will pass.”

I happened to be squatting at the entrance of the orphanage to watch the excitement. When I heard this, I raised my head and said to the pious nun, "Even if God himself came to London, he would starve to death here."

The nun looked at me with a look of shock on her face and said, "God bless you, poor girl, don't you believe that the Spirit of God is with us?"

I looked at her with a grin, and said in an almost rascally tone, "If you give me a piece of warm, delicious white bread now, I'll trust you and your God."

Mrs. Cole—the stern-faced, rigid steward of the orphanage—glared at me fiercely.Before she started yelling at me to go away, I ran away quickly.

In short, by the time [-] came, the war had slowed down and the situation in the orphanage had improved a lot, but the number of children was still astonishingly large.Therefore, groups of children who had sneaked out of the orphanage wandered the streets of Leicester every day that summer.

After I cleaned up those gangsters in the orphanage that day, I wandered aimlessly in the rain alone.

"What a bunch of new boys," I thought to myself, as I walked up the curb, "who don't know my name in Leicester Street. No one but that Tom Riddle I'm fucking courting death when I fight."

I don't want to go home at all.My father just sat staring at my mother's picture for hours on end, not speaking, except for being very drunk and unconscious.I also didn't want to go to my mother's house, the Randalls never had anything but rollicking and sneering at me.

By the time I reached a dingy, run-down bar, I was soaking wet.I sat down on an upside-down trash can, pulled out a pack of half-soaked cigarettes, pulled out one, and patted the end of the cigarette with my wand.A bright star lit up at my fingertips.

I closed my eyes slightly, exhaled a puff of smoke slowly, and the sound of rain was endless.

I stared blankly at everything in front of me—this gray world of despair, sunk in the boundless rain.Inexplicably, I recalled the image of a sailboat sinking in a rainstorm, a kind of silent sadness.

The bar was full of hypocrites and call girls who had just got off work, and there were some serious-looking female secretaries and typists in skirts, sitting near the window, talking sadly.

I ordered a bottle of beer, sat at the bar near the door, and drank listlessly.After some time, I noticed a noise coming from the door.

"Someone is fighting!"

"It's those gangsters from the orphanage again." The bar waiter said with a white towel on his shoulders.

"I said, there are already too many orphans in this world! I bet they will spread all over the country like locusts, and then cause World War III!" Said a middle-aged man with a vulgar appearance sitting in front of the bar, and then I was amused by myself and laughed.

The bartender didn't smile.He stretched his neck towards the door, and gave a curious snort, "It seems that the leader of the group of orphans was beaten this time. He passed out as soon as he reached the door, and that bastard jumped up to beat him up!"

As soon as I heard this, I jumped off the high stool, pushed away the person standing in front of me, and squeezed towards the door.

"You son of a bitch!" A boy with dark brown hair and slender hands and feet rode on top of a boy in a long black coat, punching him in the face one after another, "You didn't expect that you still have today Right? You bastard! If I beat you up and throw you here today, no one will show mercy to you!"

"Go away, you coward!" I yelled angrily, grabbing the dark brown-haired boy by the collar without thinking, and pulling him up hard, "I guess you walked past him when he was awake. You don't even have the courage, do you?"

He turned around and punched me.There was a sharp pain at the corner of my eyebrows, and I felt a hot liquid running down my forehead.Unprepared, I staggered and fell backwards to the ground.

"Who told you to meddle in your own business!" he snarled at me, slobbering all over my face.

Furious, I reached into my pocket and a white light shot out of my pocket and hit the brunette boy in the face.He screamed in pain, fell to the ground and vomited.

I kicked him in the stomach, crouched next to him, and threw the cigarette butt in his face.

"How come there are so many people who haven't heard of my name today? I don't say it twice, you better fucking remember it for me—" I grabbed the hair on his forehead and said coldly, " Fight with me, court death!"

After I finished speaking, as soon as I let go, his head fell heavily on the ground with a bang, and he let out a painful groan.

I threw a few banknotes to the waiter in the bar, and he helped me carry the black-haired boy who fell unconscious on the ground into the room, and let him sit in a dark and empty booth at the back.

Of course I know who this dark-haired boy is.

"Tom Riddle, that pretty, queer boy in the orphanage, he's as good at fighting as Lizzie Bradley." Always scared the other kids in the orphanage to death."

It wasn't until seeing him later at Hogwarts that I understood why he was "weird" and "scares the other kids to death".He's no more a Muggle than I am.Wizards and Muggles fight, who wins and who loses? 【5】

Although I've always had the honorable title of "fights like Tom Riddle," I've never had a problem with him.He was in my year at Hogwarts, but he never spoke to me, nor did he seem to know me from the Muggle world.When he wasn't at school, he terrorized the children in the orphanage and I terrorized the children in Leicester Street, and the two of them never crossed paths.Although I never spoke to him, "people who don't bully each other" has become a kind of rivers and lakes between us.We never crossed the line—at least, I never did until I knocked out those three thugs from the orphanage half an hour ago.

But after all, it was they who provoked me first, and he was also at fault. Could it be that he can settle accounts with me?But even thinking that way, I couldn't help feeling a little guilty, because I'm not a fool, and I know what it's like to annoy Tom Riddle.

If it had been different from the usual scene where I saw him being beaten, I would have been overjoyed, and maybe I would have bought a bottle of beer and watched it while drinking.But today is different, because I just beat him up, so I rescued him from that bastard very sensiblely, so that I can settle with him.

The problem is that he is still in a coma, and I have to let him know that I saved him. I'm not interested in being a person who does good deeds without leaving a name.

At this moment, Tom sat quietly on the booth, with his head hanging limply on one side like a rag doll, his face as pale as parchment, and his lips were bloodless.When I held him up, I could clearly feel his arms shaking violently.

The bartender brought a glass of brandy.I picked up the glass and poured it directly into his mouth without hesitation.He coughed violently, and an unnatural flush appeared on his face.He slowly opened his eyes, his eyes were a little stagnant, quietly resting on my face.

"Elizabeth?" His voice was hoarse and weak, but I still understood that he said my name.

"Lizzie." I corrected him reflexively. I don't like being called by my full name [6].I raised my eyebrows, and immediately grinned in pain.I pressed my dirty sleeve to the wound on my head and asked, "Do you know my name?"

He didn't speak, and looked at me like a dream, with a strange sadness in his eyes.It's like—I cursed inwardly—as if he knew me!

His face is really handsome and charming.

I admit, Tom Riddle is the most handsome boy at Hogwarts.He looked like a bum now, with a black eye and bleeding from a gash on his jaw.His rain-soaked hair was greasy and filthy, half of his black coat was covered with slimy mud, the collar of his sweater was scorched, and the gray wool had turned black, sticking up in strands. With an unpleasant burnt smell.

In the past four years, every time I saw his tall figure in the school corridor, he always talked politely to everyone around him, focused and serious, and sometimes showed a charming smile.His smile is really charming--the black eyes have a moving luster, and the corners of his lips are slightly raised, with a hint of rich depth.

He never spoke to me at school.But at this moment, he just stared at me quietly like this, with an undercurrent of sadness surging in his dark eyes.I stared blankly at him, and it took several seconds to come back to my senses, and my thoughts returned to what I just wanted to say.

I coughed dryly and asked him again: "Do you know my name?"

He lazily half-opened his eyes, and there was a peaceful light in his dark eyes.The corners of his mouth were slightly slanted, and he nodded with a hint of amused expression.

"Someone just beat you up," I said.

"Thank you for the reminder," his voice was a little hoarse, but with a hint of sarcasm, "otherwise I really thought that I accidentally bruised my eye circles when I was doing exercise."

I ignored his sarcasm, but looked at him with evil intentions, and said solemnly: "I saved you, I know your mind may not be clear now, but you'd better remember..." I held up a finger, pointed to my own nose, and said in a word, "I, Lizzie Bradley, saved your life! Not anyone else! It was Lizzie Bradley Deli!"

He looked at me silently and didn't speak.From the look in his eyes, there was no doubt that he thought he was looking at a raving lunatic.

After a while, he looked at my bleeding forehead and asked, "How hard did you hit your head, Elizabeth?"

Well, he remembered my name, mission accomplished.It doesn't matter if he thinks I'm crazy or not, as long as he can remember that I saved him when he finds out that I attacked the people in the orphanage.One thing is worth another thing, it is also the rules of the rivers and lakes.

I looked at him, giggling happily.Riddle's expression became a little distorted, probably because he wanted to laugh, but the muscle twitches touched the wound.I think he must have thought I had been hit with a concussion.

Just then, I saw Margaret Randall go through the dilapidated wooden door of the bar.She put away her dripping pink umbrella, talking cheerfully to Sylvia Black, who was walking beside her.

Seeing her, I frowned in disgust, like I saw shit on the road.

"Damn it," I cursed, ducking into the booth next door, pressing the hood of my hoodie over my head.

I lay motionless on the table, pulling my hair down to cover my face.Through the crevices of my dirty, wet hair, I see Margaret Randall's round pink face and curly blond hair piled on either side of her forehead.Her diminutive figure came along the dimly lit passage.Sylvia Black [7] followed her.She was wearing a black windbreaker, and her straight black hair hung like a curtain on both sides of her cold face.Judging from her expression, whatever Margaret was babbling about, she wasn't interested at all.

The thing I hate the most about the Randalls is Margaret.She was the daughter of Mr. Julian Randall's ex-wife, she was in my year, also at Ravenclaw, and she was a stupid, self-righteous cow who never croaked.And Sylvia is from Slytherin, I don't know her very well.I only know that her family is rich, and she always has a cold and arrogant look, as if she doesn't care about anything, giving people a sense of repulsion.In school, she didn't associate with the rich and powerful pure-blood family children led by Malfoy, but was very close to Tom Riddle, who was born in poverty but had excellent grades.The rumors of the two of them are always rumored throughout the grades, and almost everyone thinks that it will be a matter of time before the two of them make their relationship public.

"Tom!" I heard Sylvia's gasping voice behind me, her voice had a clear, calm metallic tone, "Why are you here?"

Breathing heavily, Margaret said hurriedly, "My God, Syl, what are we going to do? Shall I call Papa? Or—"

"Shut up, he seems to have passed out," said Sylvia.

Passed out?I wondered, wasn't he still awake just now, and was mocking me mercilessly?Did he faint again after such a short while?

"Margaret, run home quickly and bring him a coat of Tony's." Sylvia said swiftly.

"how about you?"

"I'll wait here."

Margaret didn't seem very happy, but she didn't resist Sylvia and ran away quickly.

As soon as Margaret left, I quietly walked out of the bar with my head down, not wanting to stay in this right and wrong place.

I thought this matter could come to an end, but what I didn't expect was that, on a rainy evening a few days later, when I passed by the door of the bar, I saw Tom and Margaret walking towards the door.I didn't want to run into them head-on, so I dodged and hid by the door, waiting for them to go through first.

I looked at the two of them suspiciously. Since when did Margaret and Tom start to get married together?In school, they were completely incompatible with each other, and Margaret's brother Tony Randall had always publicly opposed students forming factions and gathering forces at Hogwarts. He watched Tom Riddle It's well known that it's not pleasing to the eye, how could his sister get so close to Riddle?

"Thank you," I heard Riddle say to Margaret in a beautiful deep voice, "if you hadn't helped me the other day, Mrs. Cole would have scolded me again for fighting outside. me."

"It's all right," said Margaret sweetly, "the man who beat you ran away as soon as he saw me coming."

As soon as I heard this, my anger jumped up.Run away as soon as you see her coming?Merlin's underpants, I've never seen a more stupid person in my life.Miss Margaret Randall, who had been pampered since she was a child, had no idea of ​​our cultural traditions on Leicester Street-where only violence can stop violence.When you see someone fighting, if you don't want to make trouble, then shut up and watch, or join one side to fight, don't say polite nonsense to persuade the fight.Margaret really thought those bastards would behave like a gentleman not to do anything in front of ladies?

I know Riddle knows as well as I do that Margaret is lying, but I don't know what he's up to.

Seeing him walking away talking and laughing with Margaret, I suddenly remembered an incident that happened last year. Riddle and Rosalyn Malfoy also seemed to be so unexpectedly close.All kinds of rumors spread throughout the grades. Some said that Abraxas Malfoy had a duel with Riddle because of this, and others said that Riddle severely punished Rosalind, and since then Malfoy and Malfoy's subordinates have been restrained. Those people... Whatever the truth, Tom Riddle had Malfoy's power at Hogwarts under control.However, he did not become more arrogant because of this. On the contrary, his attitude towards others became more humble and polite, and the teachers liked him even more.

Malfoy's experience may be repeated in the Randall family.

[3] Lester Street (Lester Str.) is the fictional location of this article, and its prototype is South Lambeth, South London, where Tom Riddle's orphanage was filmed in the Harry Potter series.

【4】伦敦大轰炸（TheBlitz）是指在第二次世界大战中纳粹德国对英国首都伦敦实施的战略轰炸。德国对英国的轰炸发生在1940年9月7日至1941年5月10日间，轰炸范围遍及英国的各大城市和工业中心，但以伦敦受创最为严重。

【5】In the setting of this book, the British Ministry of Magic has banned minors from using magic outside of school since 1950.Prior to this, the Ministry of Magic only prohibited witches and wizards under the age of 11 from possessing wands and using spells without authorization.

[6] Lizzie (Liz, orLizzie) is the nickname and abbreviation of Elizabeth (Elizabeth).

【7】Sylvia Black is the original character of this article. According to the setting of this article, she is the youngest sister of Mr. Orion Black.Sylvia later married her cousin Cygnus Black, replacing Druella Rozier (mother of three Bella sisters) in the original books.