from the lightning market
(A side story to Dreamwalk Blue. If you haven’t read that series… Well, I suppose you could look on this as an appetizer. Mange, mange…)
A/N: This is not quite so historically accurate as I would like. *looks sheepish* I got the idea and it just wouldn’t go away, and I couldn’t make it work without fudging the timeline a little. For that, I humbly beg forgiveness. The action of this piece takes place in August of 1940 (around the 26th to be precise). The Battle of Britain "officially" lasted from July 10 to October 31 of that year. However, bombing raids began before and lasted long after that time period. In addition, while the first bombs fell on London itself on August 23, the part of the fighting truly considered "The London Blitz" didn’t begin until September 6. Why am I telling you all this? Well, because given that historical data this story could not have happened the way I’ve written it. I know that, but I’m exercising my creative license. ^_- There was just no believable way to have Tom in London once the term started at Hogwarts, so I simply moved everything up by about a week. Anyone who fancies themselves a WWII scholar is invited to send me very nasty email should the spirit move them. ^_^ We can have a nice debate about whether Hitler’s failure to pursue the evacuees from Dunkirk across the Channel is really what ultimately lost him the war.
And one of the books I used to research this piece was called London, A History. Coincidence? I think not. Thanks, of course, to my lovely beta-readers – Emily, Karina and Laura.
Summary: The Battle of Britain rages, London burns and a young Tom Riddle tries desperately to escape the powerlessness and devastation that is life in the Muggle world. A companion piece to Dreamwalk Blue.
Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me really. The Harry Potter universe, as always, belongs to J.K. Rowling, and I’m certainly not presuming to make any money from it. The London Blitz, with all its dashing RAF pilots and unlikely heroes, belongs to posterity - I’ve simply been privileged to experience its stories. NEW DISCLAIMER – please read: This is a work of fanfiction – I have no moral, legal or ethical claim on any of what is found herein. The main source material is the trademarked/copyrighted property of Joanne Kathleen Rowling, Bloomsbury/Scholastic, Warner Bros. and others. This is a fan work, not for profit and/or revenue. No one else is intended to profit monetarily and/or generate revenue from it either. Other sources are cited in the notes at the end of each chapter. If this is deemed unsatisfactory, a footnoted version is available on request and historical references are cited on my website.
THE LIGHTNING MARKET
The Battle of Britain was pure theatre, like a series of medieval jousts carried off at 25,000 feet, and it made folk heroes of England's best airmen. Then the enemy's bombers gave the people an even closer look at war: they started striking at the heart of London.
The London blitz of 1940 began when an errant bomber, aiming for some aircraft factories on the outskirts, mistakenly hit the central city, destroying a church and killing people emerging from the pubs at closing time. Churchill responded by striking the core of Berlin, and in turn, Hitler unleashed wave after wave of planes in an all-out assault on London's East End…
Entire blocks of row houses were leveled; factories were gutted, left for smoldering ash… The sound of air raid signals became as familiar as police sirens, the smell of burning wood as common as kerosene… More than 177,000 camped out in the London Underground stations each night… Awful though the shelters were, people found it a comfort to share disaster. Londoners played cards and joked and made dates to meet at the same curve in the tunnel wall, as if it were the corner pub… There they found camaraderie and freedom from the harsh light of reality at street level. The subway was their cave, proving that Churchill was right when he said Hitler could drive things into a new Dark Age. In some ways, he already had.
(from the century peter jennings and todd brewster)
The girl came in again today… She told me her name is Enola and that she's working for the WVS, running one of the mobile canteens that are sent to the fires… She and her brother Tom are still sleeping in the tubes. I asked her if that was safe and she said probably not, but at least down there you couldn't hear the one that got you and that was a blessing.
(from fire watch connie willis)
London, 1940
There had been a time, he knew, when London wasn't burning. It was hard to remember sometimes, what it had been like to live without the wailing of the sirens and the grief-stricken, without the smoke and thunder and daylit nights - what it had been like before the summer turned to blood and ink and the whine of falling bombs.
Tom walked along the cramped, rain-slicked streets, away from the market, where the poor and desperate merchants struggled to carry on a semblance of life as usual. From a run-down newspaper stand, the headlines screamed that British bombs were falling on Berlin. Somehow, Tom couldn’t feel any of the triumph his fellow Londoners were surely indulging in.
He rounded a corner, closing in on the place he’d called home since he could remember. The building - tucked in among the leaning, gritty buildings of Rosemary Lane in Whitechapel’s industrial district - was close enough to catch the faint chimes of St. Mary’s bells along the High.
Antiseptically clean and painfully ordered, the place wasn’t harmful so much as it was empty, an aching gash of nothing across his heart, in the place where light and love and safety should have dwelt.
Tom ran lightly up the steps and slipped in through the front door. He headed straight down the hardwood-floored hall to the Assistant Director’s office. Michael O’Connell, a bearded, blond-haired man in his late twenties, sat hunched over a ledger, his feet hooked on either side of a much-abused stool.
O’Connell kept the place together and they all knew it. Galvin, the director, was too often in his cups; a sad, rumpled man who would have been removed long ago if not for O’Connell’s soft heart and quick thinking. And, so, the boys respected him as the one who insured they had food and blankets enough, and who kept the heat and electricity running when it got cold. As such, Tom respected him as well, but couldn’t seem to summon any affection for the man.
"I'm back, sir," Tom said, softly.
"Oh, good. Did you do as I asked, Tom?" O'Connell asked distractedly, his attention still focused on the books.
"Yes, sir," Tom said, straightening his posture.
"Right then." O'Connell laid aside his pen. "Did Mrs. Collins give you any trouble about the coupons?"
"No, sir." Tom handed over the stack of ragged papers. "And she said to tell you Mr. Collins has got hold of some special items you might be interested in."
"Did she now? Good." He smiled at Tom. "Don't go mentioning that last bit to anyone now, you hear? And maybe we'll have some tinned salmon for dinner this week."
"Of course, sir."
"Good lad," O’Connell tweaked Tom’s cap and shooed him out the door.
Dinner had already started, so Tom hurried to take his place at the table. The spartan dining room was nearly half-empty now, the number of children dwindling slowly, anemically, from the youngest to the eldest. Now, at thirteen, Tom was one of the youngest that remained.
In a panic, they'd begun sending the children to the countryside, loading them onto train after train, hoping vainly to keep them safe, to protect them from the bloody realities of a world intent on self-destruction.
For the entire summer, Tom had been afraid of being packed off to some farm in Sussex or Lancashire with no way of getting to school for the start of term. Now, with August drawing to a close, it seemed he’d lasted it out.
Soon, very soon, he would be sitting in Hogwarts’ magnificent Great Hall, watching clouds skitter across the enchanted ceiling, and eating bread with real butter, and drinking scalding, black tea from those thick porcelain mugs… Tom licked his lips, pushing away the remnants of his potatoes and the dregs of warm milk in his tin cup. Oh, the food alone made leaving London worth it. He hadn’t drunk a proper cup of tea since June.
From the head of the table Galvin said firmly, "Don’t waste your milk, Tom. It’s all you’ll get..."
click here to read the rest.
~curious about the meanings of the tarot cards in the images for each series? find out why the tarot card for the lightning market is "the magician" here~
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