For Thine Is the Kingdom and the Power
Nicholas of Tolentino Orphanage of Little Hangleton.
The sign has always been decrepit, he remembers, but the years have worn down the meticulously carved letters since he last set foot on the winding gravel path, the one forever draped in the crinkled brown leaves of last autumn, it seems. Running an index finger down the side of the wood, the sign's splinters hook onto his skin. He lifts his hand to his face, examining closely the pricks of ashy gray protruding from his flawless skin. He smiles and they melt away. Inconspicuously, he slips his hood on, and robe swishing behind him, he begins the long walk up to the shadowed building standing on a hill.
Lord Voldemort was a child once -- this place ensures he will remember that -- and as a child he learned that Nicholas was the Catholics' patron saint of children. He is your protector, your mentor, they told him. He also learned that, as Catholics, they were different, the minority, always prone to being thought of as strange. Solidarity with our father in Rome, they proclaimed, in the face of Anglican heresy. So when he accidentally sent vases of freshly blooming flowers flying into the priest's face, covering it with perfumed water and blood, and the congregation, deep in their prayers, glared at him, he wanted to ask if he was a minority too.
Christian charity will provide for you, little Tom.
He brushes aside the sign covering the door. It reads, "DO NOT ENTER."
The bell still possesses its distinctively warm ting sound, Voldemort discovers as he enters the small room lined with dusty blackboards, the room in which he learned his ABCs, when to say "please" and "thank you," and to recognize that ambition was for naught if you ended up in hell anyway. It is clear that no one has set foot in this room for years.
Accept God. Accept that you, too, were created in His image.
And, there! Ah, yes, there, the iron-wrought beds lined sternly up against the wall with chipped paint, the site of interminable nightmares, all of them mingled in his dead mother's screams, a deadening drumbeat, and a wind that tore at his skin until it began peeling away. Under his breath, Voldemort curses, cursing at all the orphanage workers that never listened to his pleas, the ones who thought his derangement something that would dissolve with age.
In the depths of his memory, he hears footsteps. And he knows they are not of his imagination.
God loves you, Tom. Love Him, and He will save you.
Voldemort steps into the adjoining chapel. Its stained glass windows depicting scenes from the Muggles' Bible are all but been cracked, whether by the forces of nature or human mischief, but the Crucifix looms above, its wood still smooth, the pain on Jesus Christ's face stark. Below the Savior stands a priest cloaked in white.
"You, Muggle!" He slips his wand out of his cloak and directs it at the hunched figure. The priest does not look up. "I said, Muggle!"
The priest's right hand moves rapidly from his forehead to his chest, then to each of his shoulders, and Voldemort hears him muttering, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…"
"Your petty god cannot defeat me," he hisses. "You told me once that He would be my Savior. Well, I have saved myself, and I do not need this falsehood you call heaven when I have found it here -- here, on this sinful and decadent earth!" The priest's blue eyes turn to him, sorrowful and deep. "You, my friend, are the ones that worship an idol, and I wish you better fortunes in your afterlife."
Quite simply, the priest falls backwards, and when he hits stones of the chapel floor, he is dead. Pulling his wand towards him, Voldemort tugs the cross away from the metal bindings that hold it to the wall and brings it in front of him, the body and tears of Christ now floating ethereally before him.
"I have saved myself," he whispers.
Slowly, he turns the Crucifix on its axis so that he faces its unadorned wooden surface. Voldemort levitates the corpse of the priest and brings its arms parallel to the floor. A wicked smile on his face, he backs the body onto the cross and magically nails him to it, shuddering in ecstasy as the metal drives through the priest's flesh and bones. He flicks his wand and watches as the Crucifix rises into the air before it turns upside down, revolving slowly.
The priest's eyes remain shocked and open, his limp fingers dangling towards the floor.
Clasping his hands, Voldemort bows his head and laughs quietly.
The words are unpracticed around his mouth -- he hasn't been in a religious house for years -- but the prayer is still inside him, a plant withered and parched but alive. He spoke them once as a child, brought to the confessional by angry nuns, and now he speaks them to the dead man before him.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.