May 2nd, 1998
To: Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore,
You win. Is that what you wanted to hear? Alright, I'll say it again: You win. And I'll admit, I do not want to die tonight, but I suppose it is no use begging.
I must say you did a marvelous job, Dumbledore. You managed to fool everyone, the muggles, the wizards, the entire world, you even managed to convince Harry Potter himself that he was the chosen one. Little do they all know that you took care of the chosen one years before he was a threat. You found him in a little dingy building and brought him into your school, watched him personally, concocted a plan to get him out of the way from the beginning. But he realized what you were doing, he was naive and young, he thought he could defeat you himself, he thought he was strong enough. He failed.
You captured his mind, his body, his soul, forced him under your will, a mere teenager that you tortured until you could use him. The imperious curse, I still feel it within me, a fist clamped over my heart and sabotaging every muscle in my body. How was I supposed to fight that? How was I supposed to fight my own self? How was I supposed to stop my own mouth uttering the words of death anytime you wanted someone gone? You built me as a villain, a madman, a murderer while you came out as the hero, winning battles against me only because you forced me to do so. And you let the world place their misguided hopes on the shoulders of a small skinny boy who was no more than an orphan with a scar you drove into his forehead as an infant. Harry Potter, the boy who lived so you could spread your lies and propaganda, the boy who lived so you could pretend that he was the chosen one, that I was simply a power-hungry monster set upon devouring the world.
I feel the fist even now, suffocating me, letting my mind watch my decrepit body commit the worst of crimes, kill my family and innocent people just to paint you as a hero, to provide the world a common enemy so that you could rise from the ashes and save everyone. Your plan is perfect. I will die tonight and Harry Potter will think it was he who defeated me, and though you are presumed dead by all, you will be as venerated as Potter. I know that if I had only seen through your plan sooner, if I had only been stronger, if I had only won that very first fight years before Harry Potter was even born then hundreds would still be alive. I would have grown up as an ordinary teenage boy and you would be the one who was dead instead of only pretending to be.
The fist is driving me away, to Hogwarts, to my glorious demise. I am afraid to die, but there is nothing I can do except write this down, pray that someone discovers my hastily scrawled words and beg that they believe me. I will die tonight knowing that the death of your power is inevitable because no one lives forever, the phoenix must burst into flames. And maybe then my story, the real story will be common knowledge. They will know that I have suffered a thousand lifetimes of agony trying to fight one single spell. They will know that I was meant to save the world. They will know that I was the chosen one and you, Dumbledore were the villain.
Death is not the end, Dumbledore. You of all people know this. My memory will live on, even if it is not the truth for some time. I go now to my death believing the truth always comes out and one day someone will weep at my grave and care that a child sacrificed themselves to end your reign of terror. I die knowing no one else shall die by my hand, even if it is being forced. I die well aware that you can no longer pin your crimes on me and that my years of suffering will soon be over.
And now, at the end, I recall the beginning. The small dark-haired boy alone against the world. That boy is still within me, somewhere, even if he has been ripped apart seven times over. I write this for him. I write this for me. I write this for what could have been and most of all Albus Dumbledore, I write this for the truth.
Tom Marvolio Riddle,
Known now to the world as,
Lord Voldemort