Red and dancing, he hopped comically from foot to foot in that cold grey place. The smell of burning flesh made me salivate; they kept us hungry, there.
Bright orange light, burning away my boredom. I still can't remember why he'd been going to beat me: does it matter?
I'd heard of his other "special" punishments, which he took such pleasure in administering, but I had escaped those. Even before I burnt him I had the talent for making him uneasy.
After that: he stayed away from me. He handled me carefully and delicately, as a bomb is handled.
No one could prove I'd done it: how would such a thing be possible? But he knew, and I knew, and that was all that mattered.
I liked it when he caught my eye-- then he dropped his own. Eyeball tennis. I always won.
But the time he caught fire. That was the best. That was real life.
***
It was black and white, for me, before that. Not good and bad. Ink on paper. Words have a rhythm like rain, and the rain seemed almost constant, in that grim time after the war.
I read like an illness, or an addiction. But I wasn't escaping. I was searching. I always knew there was something: something that existed in those sheafs of paper, that could not be controlled by the fat sweaty man who "looked after" we skinny troops of unwanted.Then I burnt him, and I realised.
I'd been searching for magic.
And I watched him burn, and I knew I'd found it. I knew I'd never look back.
***Ironic, that my soul should once again be hiding inside ink and paper.
There's a nakedness, a vulnerability: anyone can pick up a book, leaf idly through its pages. I am exposed.
But I am also camouflaged: like a snake I can lurk undetected. And the fingers of a reader caress me into life: the tiny drops of sweat on their hands awaken me, make me hungry.
I have offered my soul up freely to your avaricious gaze. Do not be surprised, that it cuts both ways in that little tent of darkness, under your blankets, Ginny. Little intimacies in ink.
Were you also searching for something, in a book? In a book is where you've found it. I'm so much closer to you than Harry Potter could ever be.We're one heart, one mind, Ginny. Isn't that kind of closeness what you crave? And of course, the one mind is mine.
Emotional tennis. I always win.
* * *
And once again, I have come alive. Black and white, dry-rustling paper has yielded to red paint, splashed joyfully. I whistle while I work. Red for reawakening.
***a/n: um, I'll probably take this down tomorrow. I wrote it as an attempt to wriggle inside Voldemort's head as I'm going to write his POV in Alternity. But doing this has given me another fic idea, centring on the diary, so I posted this to see how youse react. A whole story written in this style might be a bit much, perhaps. I suspect this actually wants to be a poem but I can't write poetry and don't intend to try anytime soon. Reviews much appreciated, obviously.
--morrigan