Chapter Text
Against the Sun
Prologue
Sunday the Third of November
The Year Nineteen Hundred and Thirty-Two
Lord Rosier,
Per the arrangement and contract extent between your lordship and Mary Rose Katherine Sheridan, once known professionally as Rose de Wynter, I am thus writing to inform you that I have extended patronage and housing to an orphan of magical extraction.
The child, known per the records at one Wool’s Orphanage as Tom Marvolo Riddle, is currently five years of age and was born on New Year’s Eve of Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-Six.
Sincerely,
Your Ward
Rose Dominique Sheridan
Of Rose Cottage, Elan Valley, Wales
Rose Dominique Sheridan was born under - depending on how one looked at it - either scandalous or practical circumstances.
She didn’t have parents as such.
Instead, she had a benefactor and a, well, a Rose de Wynter.
The former was one Lord Dominic Edward Rosier, a pureblood wizard of some fifty-six years when she was born, and the latter was, arguably, a muggleborn whore.
Mary Rose Sheridan never bothered quibbling over nomenclature - she was far too practical for that. Born to staunch Irish-Catholic merchant parents before the turn of the twentieth century in Waterfordshire, Mary Rose knew from the moment that she had her first bout of accidental magic that practicality for her wasn’t so much as a personality trait as it was a matter of survival. By the time her invitation to Hogwarts arrived, Mary Rose had already undergone an exorcism at age nine and spent many an hour kneeling before effigies of the Blessed Virgin as either one of her parents or the local clergy beat her back raw and bloody in an attempt to “drive the devil out of her.”
Having an official wixen arrival to perform feats of magic and attempt to prove that rather than possessed Mary Rose was merely magical did little to assuage her certainty that escape from the life she was born into was the only way Mary Rose would survive to see her sixteenth birthday - let alone anything else.
But as a muggleborn…well.
Magic could help her but even it had its limits.
It couldn’t change the overarching magical culture or its norms.
It couldn’t stop the purebloods who sneered at her birth status all while appraising her face and form for less-than-pure reasons - though it could silence them for a time if she was quick enough with a hex.
A pretty smile and a vivacious manner netted her invitation after invitation to holiday with friends - far away from her ostensible guardians and parents back in Ireland.
Then once she turned seventeen, a pretty smile, a vivacious manner, and a thoughtfully-selected wealthy wizard to lift her skirt bought her a muggle flat of her own in Bath - and from there Rose de Wynter was born.
But again: Mary Rose Sheridan was practical.
Even with magic and adoring patrons and benefactors - the career of a whore was a young thing’s game and even the most devastating beauties (which Mary Rose was not for all that she’d learned to use what she had to her advantage) grew less desirable as they aged.
But along with practicality, what Mary Rose had on her side was sheer audacity - as befit a Gryffindor.
And so, when a married wizard with no children or heirs decades her senior approached her regarding contingencies, well.
Mary Rose Sheridan was no one’s fool.
Bearing a child for a pureblood might have been one of the few “uses” the arseholes in her school years had thought her “worth” but as ever Mary Rose was determined to do so her way.
And with the life she’d had, even as a teenager the last thing she’d wanted was to be magically bound literally to-death-do-they-part to some wanker.
Popping a sprog for one and a retirement from her chosen profession however - now that was more the style of Rose de Wynter.
A contract was made and signed.
Lord Rosier provided a home for the child, a nanny-elf, and stipends for both the child’s care and the former-harlot’s upkeep.
Mary Rose provided Lord Rosier with a spare just in case he was unable to ever produce a legitimate heir.
Under such interesting circumstances was Rose Dominique Sheridan born.
But that, however, was merely where the story began.
Where it ended was somewhere entirely different than planned - even for Rose who, despite the memories of another life entirely crowding her brain, couldn’t have anticipated the twists and turns life would take her.
Least of all what it took just to survive it in the first place.
Tom Marvolo Riddle would remember the day an angel came and saved him from the muggle filth until the day he died.
She was tiny, smaller than him and he was hardly the fittest child due to Matron Cole of Wool’s Orphanage preferring to drink away the funds provided by the government rather than spending them on the children in her care. Back then as Tom Riddle, the devil spawn child of the house, whenever rations ran short - and they often did so - he was the first to be forced to tighten his belt. Tom spent his early years hungry more often than not and his diminished height and stick-like limbs at the time showed it clearly.
Wreathed in curls glinting golden in the weak November morning light, and dressed in a pristine white pinafore, with plump unblemished cheeks of porcelain and a pink rosebud mouth, Rose Sheridan was the most beautiful thing Tom had ever seen.
Like one of the angels in his neighborhood church’s stained glass window brought to life.
And that was before she saw the little garter snake twining around his fingers and instead of screaming or throwing rocks at him for being a demon, had asked him what it was saying with pure curiosity shining on her face.
Tom, flabbergasted, had answered: “'e’s asking if I’ve seen any mice. 'e’s 'ungry.”
Rather than run away screaming at this proof of devilment, Rose had merely nodded sagely, and then held out her hand.
“You better come with me then.” She told him seriously. “You don’t belong here with them.”
“I know.” Tom answered bitterly, feeling ephemeral impressions of caning after caning for his devilish ways striking across his back in recall. “But the families keep bringin' me back. The matron says I’m possessed. She wanted the priest to come an' 'andle me.” He snorted. As if he didn’t know what that meant. “Wants 'im to drive out the devils from insi'e me.”
“Everyone has a devil or two inside them,” Rose shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. “It’s whether we listen to them or not that’s important.”
“You’re a strange girl.” Tom blinked, taken aback at words that would’ve gotten him another caning if he’d ever thought to say as such to the priest or the matron or anyone at all. Let alone a boy he’d only just met.
“You’re a strange boy,” she countered. “At least to them you are.” Then she waved her still-offered hand around a bit impatiently. “Do you want to escape them or not?”
Tom merely narrowed his eyes, suspicious to his bones.
In response, Rose rolled her own then blew out a breath before taking a furtive look around, retracting her hand and bringing it in close to her chest.
An instant later, there was a glowing ball of light cradled in her cupped hands.
Tom gasped, rising to his feet and rushing over to her side, glancing frantically between the light - light that he could feel like a warmth tingling against his skin, that didn’t burn but also didn’t have a source other than her.
“You’re like me.”
Rose smiled impishly up at him, then released the wandless lumos that she’d spent hours and hours practicing. Just in case. She was no Tom Marvolo Riddle. Magic didn’t come as easy for her as it did for him.
“You’re like me,” she countered him once again, then tilted her head a bit to the side. “And you don’t belong here.” She repeated, gently offering her now-empty hand once more. “Come with me. You’ll be safe, I promise.”
“You don’ even know me name.”
“What’s that matter, you don’t know mine either?” She covered her lapse quickly. “Names are less important than getting somewhere safe. Somewhere where they can’t touch you or hurt you anymore. So?” She asked again. “What’ll it be, strange boy?”
“Tom. My name is Tom Riddle.” He told her.
Then he reached out slowly and took her hand.
And nothing would be the same in Wizarding Great Britain, ever again.