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CHAPTER SEVEN

A metaphorical image: Across the top are Granger, Voldemort, and Dumbledore; Voldemort looks straight ahead, while Granger and Dumbledore face away, towards the side of the page, looking concerned, pointing their fingers as if to illustrate a point in an argument. Dumbledore's right hand is black and shriveled. In the middle of the page is a child, the young Tom Riddle: Ze looks very much like Voldemort except that ze's smiling instead of having a flat expression, zir face is hidden by a baseball cap instead of by darkness, and ze's wearing a colorful shirt and pants instead of a dark robe. To the right of Riddle is a younger version of Dumbledore, who has a less-wrinkled face and brown hair and beard instead of grey, but still wears the purple robes and glasses of zir present self; to the left is a two-story brick building with gables and windows, some of which are lit.

At the bottom is the chapter title:

The Riddle of the Past

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This chapter's title is one of the few puns I have allowed myself.

(Since I'm designing Voldemort's Children to be a serious story with a grand sense of drama, I can't use most of the hilarious things that I think of while I'm writing it. This one was acceptable because the double-meaning of the name “Riddle” feeds into my themes, rather than being a distraction.)

Approximate readability: 10.05 (287 characters, 66 words, 3 sentences, 4.35 characters per word, 22.00 words per sentence)