Title : estrangement
Author : Elizabeth Moonstone (LJ : heaven_hope)
Beta-reader : jakuako
Disclaimer : The Potterverse and all its characters belong to JK Rowling and Warner Bros.
Rating : PG-13
Character : Tom Riddle
Summary : A young boy's failure to connect with humanity turns him into a monster. A Voldemort origin story.
Author note : I always write a fic for Christmas and I promised myself to write this one a very long time ago. It's my first English fic ; the French version also exists under the name Déliquescence. None are the original version, as both have been written simultaneously.
estrangement
He's a beautiful baby, although a bit weird, with dark eyes and a pale complexion. He smiles rarely and laughs even less.
The orphanage is understaffed, and naturally the nursemaids prefer to spend time with babies who have rosy cheeks, and dimples, and laugh when cooed over.
Nobody pays him much attention.
It doesn't take him much time to notice he's special.
The adults never do.
He never outright shows them what he's capable of. A part of him wants to, but he heard them whispering, speaking about him… About how he's different from the other children, and far too quiet, and perhaps they should have him examined?
But they could have noticed anyway. The other children surely did. They steer clear from him now and the adults whisper some more.
But they never listen to what the pop-eyed orphans says about him. They blame tricks of light or gusts of wind to explain away the magic before their very eyes.
They're blind. They make themselves blind.
He begins tormenting his comrades as a test, just to see what he can get away with.
He looks for boundaries but doesn't find them. Of course, after a while, they start suspecting him, but he knows how to clean up after himself by then. And he never gets caught.
"Good" and "Evil" are manmade notions. They serve to maintain a semblance of social order.
But these rules don't concern him. He is above and beyond them.
He learns to torture others as an ordinary child would learn to play the piano. He does his scales, his arpeggios. He just loves knowing which buttons to press.
Yes, he knows all the orphans, better than their own mother would, if they had any. He knows their secret fears, their despicable little vices, the depth (or lack thereof) of their tiny minds.
He is making himself obeyed here, by punishing those who displease him. This is power, as real as magic. Perhaps even more real.
And he is a prodigy.
He considers the orphanage his personal hell.
To be trapped with people who are so much his inferior, in power as in intellect, even in such a worthless thing as beauty.
After he realises this, he hates them with a passion. But the hatred doesn't last, and it leaves him cold. These insects doesn't deserve his hatred.
Still, he can enjoy swatting them.
He starts collecting trophies. Even mundane objects can be beautiful in a way humans couldn't ever hope to achieve.
At Hogwarts, he learns that beauty isn't as useless as he previously thought.
He cannot use his normal methods, not here, not yet. Albus Dumbledore kindly proved it to him when they first met.
But a smiling angel face, the right amount of charisma, perfect marks…and teachers and students alike are dying to do his bidding.
The stupidity of people never fails to astonish him.
He expected something different when he first arrived at Hogwarts. People do have power here but they don't know how to use it. They don't even know what to make of it!
They always lack intelligence, ambition, or drive. Their own power is too much for their little brains to handle.
The only wizard whom he gives an honourable mention is Albus Dumbledore. He is the only one to see through his mask, and a skilled wizard to boot.
He expected everything from Dumbledore. He could have tried to befriend him, to sway him to his side. He could have quietly blackmailed him. He even could have attacked him.
He expected everything from him…except nothing.
Dumbledore keeps an eye on him. But he doesn't act.
He likes to think it's because Dumbledore already knows him to be unstoppable.
(Why would Dumbledore try to stop him? Nobody ever did—couldn't be bothered to try.)
The day he loses all faith in humanity is also the day he commits his first real murders.
(Myrtle, such a sorry excuse for a human being, doesn't count.)
He found no trace of his father at Hogwarts but he hoped… He hoped that he was a foreign wizard, or even an obscure wizard, not a filthy Muggle!
So here is his own flesh and blood—a Muggle and a weakling who would die rather than take care of him!
Only in his far ancestry—only in Slytherin—does he find something resembling kinship.
No living man on Earth is his equal.
During the Blitz, he feels fear as he has never felt before. No. He feels fear for the first time of his life.
What he previously thought was fear, he realises, was only mild worry—a queasy feeling at the bottom of his stomach—easily alleviated.
What fear truly is… The sound of the bombs dropping mercilessly over his head; the knowledge that death comes swiftly and unexpectedly; that he is little, that he is as tiny and insignificant as the rest of humanity because he is mortal.
He won't let fear possess his heart. He's afraid of death so he'll impersonate it. He will become as swift and deadly as the bombs. He will tear up the sky to bring death to his enemies.
But he will also rob death. Because he can't accept…how could he ever accept to die like them? (Or to live like them.)
He shall be eternal.
He always liked to play—with people as with words. As much as he despises his old name, he's glad to turn it into something new.
It is precisely that…a metamorphosis, a rebirth.
Tom Riddle was never more than a façade—one he can shed at last.
The whole world will see and fear his true face.
Lord Voldemort's face.