Interlude: The Lost Years

From the working papers of Dr. Miranda Goshawk, March 2020

Between the end of Tom Riddle's Hogwarts career in June 1945 and the DADA application described in the preceding chapter (dated by internal evidence to autumn 1947), there is a gap of more than two years.

Riddle's own account does not bridge this gap. The reconstructed narrative moves directly from graduation to rejection, as if the intervening period were an inconvenience to be skipped. For a man so meticulous about dates and details, this omission is conspicuous.

What do we know about these years?

Employment: Ministry records confirm that Tom Marvolo Riddle took a position at Borgin and Burkes, the Knockturn Alley antique dealer, in September 1945. His letter of appointment—signed by Caractacus Burke, whose hand I have learned to recognise—describes him as a "sales assistant with particular expertise in valuation." He remained in this position until at least early 1947.

I visited the shop. It has changed hands twice since Burke's death, but the current proprietor (a nervous man who asked not to be named) showed me the staff ledgers from that period. Riddle's name appears monthly, always receiving exactly the minimum stipend, never more. There are annotations in Burke's hand: "Good eye." "Knows his history." "Clients trust him." And, in a margin note dated March 1946: "Brought in the Hufflepuff cup. Excellent work."

The Hufflepuff cup. Helga Hufflepuff's cup, sold to the shop by a witch named Hepzibah Smith in circumstances that later became a matter of Auror investigation. Smith died in 1946, apparently by misadventure. Her house-elf confessed to accidentally poisoning her. The case was closed.

I cannot prove that Tom Riddle was involved in Hepzibah Smith's death. I can only note that he worked for Borgin and Burkes during the period of her death, that he had access to her collection, that the cup subsequently disappeared, and that within months of her death he resigned his position and vanished from all official records.

Social circles: Burke's ledgers also record client meetings. Riddle appears to have cultivated relationships with members of several old wizarding families during his time at the shop. The names are familiar: Nott, Rosier, Lestrange, Avery. Young men, most of them, recently graduated or about to be. Sons of wealth and expectation, with grievances against a world that had—in their view—failed to recognise their proper place.

A network, in other words. Built quietly, over purchases and valuations and the casual conversations that happen when young men with time and money visit shops that cater to particular tastes.

Travel: There is a six-month gap in 1946 where Riddle does not appear in Burke's ledgers at all. The shop's records note him as "on leave, personal business." Ministry exit records from that period are incomplete—the war disrupted many systems—but I have found evidence suggesting travel to Albania.

Albania. Where, according to later investigations, one of Ravenclaw's lost artifacts had been hidden for centuries.

I do not know what Riddle did in Albania. I do not know what he found there. But I note that when he returned to England and applied for the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, he was—by all accounts—changed. Professor Slughorn, who saw him briefly at a gathering in early 1947, wrote to a colleague: "Tom stopped by the party. Looking well, though thinner. Something different about the eyes. He has been somewhere, done something. Would not say what."

The Application: Which brings us to the scene just concluded. The DADA rejection.

Why did he want this position? He could have pursued a Ministry career; his NEWTs were exceptional. He could have continued in the antiques trade; Burke would have promoted him. He could have left England entirely.

Instead, he returned to Hogwarts. Applied for a teaching position. Sat in a chair across from the men who had educated him and asked to be allowed to educate others.

There is a school of thought—I have encountered it in several academic papers—that Riddle wanted the Defence position because of its strategic value. Access to students. A platform for recruitment. An excuse to remain at Hogwarts, where certain artifacts and secrets remained hidden.

I do not dispute this analysis. But I think it misses something.

I think Tom Riddle wanted to go home.

He had been an orphan, a scholarship case, an outsider who made himself indispensable and was still turned away. Hogwarts was the only place that had ever pretended to want him. Even if the pretense was thin. Even if the welcome was conditional.

He asked to come back. They said no.

What followed—the organisation, the recruitment, the slow construction of an alternative power—may have been inevitable. Riddle himself would probably say it was. But I wonder sometimes whether it might have gone differently. If a chair had been offered instead of a door. If someone had said yes instead of wait.

We will never know. The door closed. The years that followed are beyond the scope of this reconstruction.

But I find myself thinking about a young man in a rented room above a shop, reading a rejection letter by gaslight, and deciding—perhaps in that moment, perhaps over the days that followed—that if the world would not let him in, he would build his own.

—M.G., 18 March 2020

[Archival note: The following chapters cover Riddle's post-rejection activities, including the formation of what would become known—first by his followers, later by his enemies—as the Death Eaters. Contemporary Ministry surveillance records from this period are extensive but heavily redacted. Dr. Goshawk's requests for full access remain pending.]