Warnings: Characters death; mentions of torture (briefly described)

Words: 1 990

Prompts:

3. colorful (word)

5. "Courage without conscience is a wild beast." Robert Green Ingersoll (quote)

13. beyond the darkness (phrase)

Written for the Quidditch League Competition (Season 2): Round one – Family Roles

Of Apples and Trees

Against common misconception, no one, not even the Great Dark Lords, is born evil. Their souls are as pure as any child's in those first few precious years of their life. It is in their adolescence and teen years that their future (and in most cases the future of hundreds others as well) is shaped.

Lord Voldemort, Tom Marvolo Riddle Junior or whatever other name he had chosen for himself during the course of his life, regardless of what he may wish to think of himself, was hardly any different. In all honesty, I find him rather boring. Tom Riddle was no different than the many other that came before him nor from those that will come after – Muggles and wizards alike. All they ever do is make more work for me. Gathering souls in the deep of the night is so, so… Middle Ages.

Even so, there is one person in that particular story who I found interesting – Tom Richard Riddle Senior. His story is not all that interesting on its own, but during the course of his life I met him twice and looked upon him countless other times and he always made an impression.

I

Tom R. Riddle (and no, this is not a typing mistake) was not a particularly good person, though he wasn't a bad one either. He simply… was. There was nothing overly special about his character or past life. Well, except the incident he never talked but often thought about. He did not remember much of it; it was all hazy and distant, as if he was a casual observer and all of it happening to someone else entirely. That person, who was so helplessly in love with that witch was not him, could not be him. The poor girl who he had pitied his entire life had turned out to be as vile as her brother and father (though, admittedly, slightly better looking, not that meant much) and he felt no remorse when the spell she had him under finally broke and left her. That wretched thing seemed to have believed him truly in love with her. And yet, all the pity he had ever felt for her had expired long time ago, when she enslaved him.

But through the years, long after all the talk about the scandal had died out, he never quite managed to forget her. Even now, as he was lying next to his beautiful (and somewhat boring) wife, he couldn't help but compare the two women. Merope, he always found wanting in any aspect.

Such were the thoughts going through Tom's head the first time I met him. The spacious room was occupied by him, his wife Jane and their infant son James. The boy was not even a year old and had gotten sick some days ago. The Muggle doctors claimed that he would be alright in a week or so, that there was no need to worry about him. They couldn't have been more wrong.

Maybe Jane Riddle had known this on some subconscious level and that was the reason she had made the maids bring James's crib in the master bedroom. Or she could simply be unwilling to be parted from her sick child and had little desire to sleep in the nursery.

Whatever the reason, as I entered the room in the deep of the night to take young James's soul, I met his father for the first time. Met is not the best word to describe the situation, I'd admit, but it is the closest one. He interested me because of his seemingly unremarkable thoughts. Tom Riddle was not the first Muggle man or wizard to be enchanted by a less than comely witch, but his memories of those months were unique, actually, his thoughts as a whole were exquisite. Not what he thought exactly, as I already mentioned he was a fairly unremarkable man, but the way he did it. They were just so, so colorful for a lack of better word. He perceived the world around him in a myriad of colors, each shade signifying a different person or even in his life. He did not remember smells or sensations, but only colors.

The time he had spent with Merope had a silvery hue around it, similar to the fumes of an Amortentia.

He was still awake when I took the boy's soul and merely seconds later he left the comfort of his big bed and paddled softly to the crib. It was almost as if he knew something had happened.

Carefully, as if not to wake his son, he lifted the small corpse. I never quite managed to understand the attachment between a parent and their child, but I do understand human grief. And that terrible human emotion was clearly written on his face when he realized young James was no longer with him.

He cradled the little body close to his chest, tears running down his cheeks. He made no sound as he hugged his most precious thing, but his thoughts said it all - dark blue, so dark and deep that one might confuse it for black. This memory would forever be engraved in his head as dark deep blue.

"My son, my precious son… Why, why did God take you?" he whispered, so softly that a human ear would not have heard it.

I left.

It is not Tom's story that I find interesting, but the colors that passed through his mind during it. What happened after our first meeting is not uncommon. I have learnt, during my many years alive, that death can do two things to the living – drive them apart or keep them closer. With Tom and Jane a chasm seemed to open between them and soon they were living separately.

The next few years were in shades of blue and green and grey, always dark. The next time we met, it was his time.

II

The family home of the Riddle family in Little Hangleton was, without a doubt, way more impressing than the London residence Tom had been living in the first time we met. Despite it being the height of the summer the fire in the living room was burning bright and the three Riddles were sitting on lavish armchairs in a certain distance from it. They, as most people, had no idea what was going to happen to them.

A boy, though he could hardly be called a boy at the age of seventeen, entered the room with confident steps and head held up high. He looked like his father; pale, dark-haired and with the sort of haunting beauty that stays with you long after he had left.

"Avada Kadavra!"

Flash of green light. The youthful voice is calm.

"Avada Kadavra!"

Another jet of emerald light followed the first.

Mere seconds later I took the souls of the elder two occupants.

Green, this is how Tom saw this moment. A pale green, though, not the vibrant color of the killing curse. He stood from the chair and turned to face the not-quite-stranger who had broken in his home and killed his parents. As with his son, he didn't say a single word. Tears, however, did not fall this time. He looked upon the two fresh corpses for the briefest of moments with ill concealed apathy. There was something surreal to him, he did not believe that his parents were dead.

"Who are you?" his voice was steady and emotionless.

"Do you not recognize your own son?" the future Lord Voldemort spat out. His handsome face twisted with rage and hatred.

"A boy born out of wicked sorcery," Tom mocked and an ugly sneer twisted his handsome features. "You may be her son, but you are no son of mine."

"No, no I am not. I am no one's son, least of all a Muggle's. And yet I am forced to bear your common dirty Muggle name; to look like a mirror image of you, albeit younger."

Tom Sr laughed. It was a terrible sound, one that unnerved the young wizard so much that his grip on the yew wand tightened a fraction.

"Your mother was as ugly as they get. Be grateful boy that you look nothing like her, even if you are cursed with her wickedness as well. Tell me, why do you come here?"

"To kill you."

"No. You want something else as well. I would be lying dead on the floor had it not been so. So, boy, what do you want?" The calmness he was feeling was more like numbness.

"Why did you leave my mother?" the younger of the two asked after a long while. "What right do you have, a mere Muggle, to leave a witch, a pregnant witch at that?" the wizard was close to shaking, his carefully crafted mask was slipping. He wanted, no needed those answers. He could not become Lord Voldemort unless he discarded the weak Tom Riddle and to do that, he needed to know why Tom Riddle existed as he did.

"Why not? That ugly hag enslaved me with her magic, turned me into her most loyal and loving pet and once the curse was broken you expect me to have stayed. The girl should be grateful I did not strangled her in her sleep but simply left."

An angry yell.

"Crucio!"

A jet of blood-red light.

Pain, pain beyond anything he had ever felt. He trashed on the floor, writhing in unimaginable pain. He screamed until he was horse, until it felt as if his throat was bleeding.

Then, as suddenly as it came, the pain stopped. The boy (his son, but how could he call him son, when all he thinks of is little James) was crouched next to him, a pale stick pointed at him.

"Care to rethink your answer, father dear?" dark eyes, so like his own, were piercing him through.

"You are brave," he said instead. "To have come to face your demons. This is what I am to you, is it not? A demon to be slayed?"

"Do not think yourself unique, Muggle."

"I see. Then tell me, how many other demons are out there? How many more will you kill? You are as mad as she was! To think I ever pitied her!"

"And me? Why did you leave me? WHY?" the other roared, the sound was only half-human. "Answer me!"

At that moment, Tom remembered the many lessons he had had with his grandfather as a child: about choosing his battles and being smart; about being kind and generous and fair; about being brave enough to pursue his goals without forgetting the other people and stop being kind. "Courage without conscience is a wild beast" old James Riddle had told him. "Do not become the beast, Tom, least someone put you down."

As much as he loved and admired the man, Tom never quite managed to follow his example. So, instead of telling the truth to the boy, he pressed on. A petty revenge on his mother.

"Because you could have been like her," he spat out with all the hatred and disgust he could muster. "A wicked spawn of Satan, born in the deepest pits of Hell. She was an abomination and so are you!"

That moment was blinding white.

Those are the last words Tom Richard Riddle ever said. His son, to whom I would faithfully serve in the near future, tortured him for hours afterwards. Until it was close to dawn and he had to leave. The boy-man healed all wounds he had inflicted on his father, so he could cover his tracks, and killed the Muggle.

I took Tom's soul with me and we went to a place beyond the darkness of the mortal world and death. It is a pity that the dead do not appreciate it and the living cannot glimpse it.