Tom Riddle was twelve years old when he succeeded in bringing the dead back to life. At age eleven, he had a penchant for ignoring such words as 'forbidden' and 'restricted' in the Hogwarts library and what could not be found there could easily be located within Knockturn Alley. More than once since summer began, he had ducked out of the orphanage and trudged his way to Muggle London. Unmissed by his peers and ignored by Mrs. Cole, his absence was far from startling news and he had always made it back whenever the caretaker took a headcount. He seemed to have a knack for showing up at the right times.
The books provided for him an outlet in the same way in which his magic had done before he had heard of Hogwarts. After his initial humiliation at the hands of Dumbledore during their first meeting, the Transfiguration teacher did not bother to seek him out. Tom took from the older man what he needed and disregarded Albus quickly after. Even the recriminations of Slughorn, who thought the young prodigy should be taking advanced Transfiguration lessons from Dumbledore, could not drudge up the necessary tolerance of Dumbledore that such classes had to allow.
Tom did not forgive. He did not forget. He did, however, listen a great deal to anything Dumbledore said, perhaps more attentively than any of the man's Gryffindor pets. He tallied away the points of hypocrisy and belittled the man in his mind. Especially when Dumbledore became self-righteous and started in on how the strong ought to protect the weak and that was the job of wizards for Muggles.
Had Tom been five years younger, he may have bought into that idea, taken comfort in it as well. His mother had been weak while he was strong, or had the potential to be strong as he had often heard Sluggy say. He had such potential, such a genius, why it was a shame that he could not be allowed to skip a year or so. Yes, he would be strong and he would have mastery over any magic he chose to incorporate within him.
So it would fall on him to protect the weak.
Tom would have believed that had it not been for the bombs that fell so readily upon England at the time. His meanderings took him to all sorts of places in order to escape the monotony at the orphanage. Unfortunately, a few of those places had an influx of the deceased and his ears rang with alarms for days after the images of the dead and dying stopped penetrating themselves into his nightmares.
He learned that no matter what, the strong could not always protect the weak. People were weak as a physical group, destined to rip themselves apart no matter how well they were taken care of, and destined to die. Nothing was immortal. Even the carefully preserved books he so cherished had a lifespan attributed to them. They would turn yellow and decay. One could always wrap them up carefully, extinguish all the air, but in so doing, the book would become useless and useless was never a good thing to be.
It was pointless to protect, pointless to care about those who would die anyway. Tom cared nothing for the people around him at any rate, so he felt nothing about this revelation.
Time was the enemy of life, not death. In time, everything slipped away. Death was merely the end of the line. If something was truly immortal, then time would no longer be a factor. Time would not even be a given. Time would be pointless, used only as a measure of minutes and small details and nothing of any great importance. There would be no rush. Tom could spend as much time as he wanted to with those he cared about, and that list was depressingly empty.
No, that wasn't quite true. There was one person out there that Tom cared about in his own way. Even he wasn't sure caring was the right word to describe what he felt. Regardless, it was this unknown element that made him turn his head to thoughts of death and how to conquer the grim destiny that awaited everything.
He looked to Necromancy, took books and scrolls that no child should ever know about, let alone lay hands upon, and at age twelve, Tom Riddle took himself to the grave of his mother, set down the proper rites and runes, and waited.
When the rotted hand sprang up from the mud, he felt exhilaration. When the rotted skin and torn clothes finally heaved itself up, held together only by a charm Tom had the foresight to use, the young Necromancer looked upon his own work and felt something akin to happiness creep up on him.
His mind controlled the newly made Inferi and he bid the creature open up her arms and accept him into her embrace. The stench of rot and the grave that swarmed around his deceased mother did not bother him. When he closed his eyes, he thought he could feel warmth against the chill of the night. Soulless eyes drifted down to the child and Tom felt a hot wetness against his cheeks. A few minutes later, he laughed, exuberant in his own talents and now fully realizing his potential. His mother had served her purpose and he bid her to go back to her eternal slumber, at peace now that he finally said his last good-bye but that she had shown him a new way to go.
Convinced that he had conquered death, his next step would be immortality and that required the study of Ilife/I rather than death.
At age fifteen, Tom Riddle made his first horcrux. It was designed to be a weapon, something to carry on his work since Tom could not reasonably do so due to Dumbledore's machinations. The success of the horcrux did not surprise Tom but it did make him think a little harder on just what he wanted these horcruxes to do. Were he to stick them within objects, they would be rendered useless until needed. It would be a revolting waste of himself in a more literal fashion. He could not have that.
But to create weapon after weapon would mean the destruction of those weapons. He needed to fortify himself as well as defend against. It was then that Tom Riddle could one of his more brilliant ideas.
Why not a horcrux that could be used as a weapon but one that would age along with him? One that would take the pitfalls of life for himself and take on his own personal revenge against the wizarding world while he remained safe in a watchful position. He would have to create a new form of magic, one that could link minds so that he would be able to watch this horcrux go to work. Whatever the horcrux learned, he would learn as well. Whatever the horcrux went through, he would go through as well if only mentally. There had to be a way of creating such a thing and Tom was confident that if anyone could do this, he could.
After all, there was an endless list of human sacrifices to be found.
At age twenty, Tom had perfected the technique, having made horcrux after horcrux, some succeeding, some not. The ones that he did not like, he quickly rejoined back to his own soul. He disliked having to do so as the damage hurt in places he could not heal and would have to let suture itself naturally for a time. It put a stop to his research which made him edgy and unreasonable for those few days after the failure.
His own determination stemmed from the fact that time was still slipping away from him. Grindelwald had already fallen and it was time for a new Dark Lord to rise from the ashes. To place this new horcrux in the seat of such power would be the greatest sort of research of all. The possibilities were too numerous to think about and that was precisely what Tom wanted. Unpredictability coupled with a slew of choices for his other self to make would equal to the most comprehensive of notes on the subject of soul magic and horcruxes.
The horcrux had reached it completion near Tom's twenty-first birthday. It was an amazing facsimile of himself, one that talked, moved, utilized magic, did everything much like the original. Tom needed to give the newest horcrux very few instructions, for the creature already knew Tom's mind in the matter. It was here that they went their separate ways, one piece of soul going off to wage war against the wizarding world while the other went back to his own ideas and speculations.
Time no longer became an issue for Tom as he had soon figured out a multitude of ways in extending his own life. Soul magics were endlessly useful as it allowed Tom's own soul to transfer to that of another human being, one that was much younger than himself if he so wanted. It took only a month for the body to adapt fully to the new soul, enough so that physical changes started showing. Black hair came out at the roots and the eyes turned an eerie red.
Tom's own soul could also be transformed with every change he undertook. The dark arts combined with alchemy was a heady combination, allowing for youth to remain so long as he remembered to take the necessary potion with every change of body. Tom never forgot.
He kept up with the antics of his other half, enjoying the carnage that the titled Lord Voldemort caused and the war that was brought around to England soon enough. Dumbledore was left distracted along with the rest of the wizarding world, which allowed Tom to seek out any other dark arts and forbidden magic that had been kept away from him. Voldemort made for a wondrous if chaotic streak and Tom took fully advantage.
He watched the Death Eaters from afar as well, noting with amusement just how easy it would be to manipulate each and every one of them. He hated them all for that reason, much as how he hated the wizarding world for being so obtuse. Even Dumbledore looked foolish next to the reality of the situation. His own notes did turn out to be copious, but not just because of the soul magic he was observing and the behavior of the horcrux. His notes consisted of prominent figures of the wizarding world, from the Minister to the Wizengamot to the Death Eaters to the Aurors.
Human behavior had become a hobby of his for over ten years and would have gone on for longer had not the inexplicable happened.
The Prophecy managed to take even Tom off guard. As did Voldemort's own violent reaction to it. He could have told his horcrux that going after the brat with partial information would not be wise but he felt it best to let the creature make his own mistakes.
A mistake on his own part, he hated to admit. The chaos at the Potter residence did not suit his purposes at all. In fact, that particular failure struck him a low blow. With Voldemort out of commission, he also had to disappear or risk having everything discovered far too early in the game.
Such a coincidence that he had wound up on the same small piece of dried up land as his horcrux. The horcrux had been desperate, clinging madly to the last thread of its life as it struggled to survive just one more day. The red eyes of the possessed snake stared up at Tom, pleading with the eternally twenty-one year old man to save him, to help him, yet it did not possess the ability to speak.
It was weak and Tom was angry.
Very angry.
He had retrieved an infant from the nearby village and had bid the horcrux to possess the human child. The horcrux had only enough strength to do so and after which, it was terribly weakened. Tom allowed it a few minutes to catch its breath before he finally spoke.
"I am not pleased with you."
That was the only warning the horcrux received. Needles were pushed down into the hands of the infant, now screaming with an adult's voice but going unheard due to the silencing wards. A third needle caressed the infant's chest, moving downwards and splitting the skin where it touched. Tom took his time, wanting to do the job right as he did everything else in his life. Flaps of skin were severed and pulled back, pinned to the ground by longer needles.
Magic was needed to keep the child alive but very little of it was actually used. Voldemort clung to life, even as he was tortured, with far more zeal than what could be expected from a barely alive spirit. Tom did not speak to him throughout the session, ignoring the screams and cries as he burned away part of the infant's skin. The small legs were dissected carefully and for a few seconds, Tom's hand resided within the intestines of the infant's body. One long, slender finger stroked the gore-covered mess almost fondly.
The horcrux had been Tom's masterpiece. To see it fall rendered both the horcrux and Tom in the word picture the boy could imagine. The horcrux's failure was his own and Tom never forgave.
He cradled the infant's head with bloodspattered hands with an infinite tenderness. A fingernail traced a tear down the child's face as he leaned close and brushed his lips against the child's.
At long last, he spoke again.
"Be mindful that you do not fail me again."
The horcrux, already reeling from the pain that did not belong to his true body, could only nod disjointedly in response. It would agree to anything to stop the agony, to be allowed to leave the body in its useless state, to wander aimlessly again until it found a new body where it would inhabit, possess, and ultimately kill. For a split second, the horcrux considered Tom's own body, but that thought vanished as soon as he remembered the mind link he shared with his original.
Tom clicked his tongue in disgust. His horcrux was always forgetting the small details.
Careful hands, used to studying the more fragile scrolls and books of foreign countries, snapped the infant's neck, releasing the piece of soul once again. Tom took out a small garter snake and the horcrux wasted no time in possessing the small reptile. It would mean starting over until it could get to something larger but at least it was still alive. That was all that mattered.
"A man named Quirrel will be coming by here soon. I strongly suggest you utilize him. He is in Dumbledore's employ and if you don't care to make us both look foolish again, you'd be wise to take out the Headmaster before you go chasing after Potter."
But his horcrux wouldn't listen and Tom knew that. The horcrux's anger was also his own only Tom knew how to reason with that emotion more skillfully.
Perhaps Voldemort would kill off the Headmaster and Potter. Perhaps Potter would kill off Voldemort. If that should happen, Tom felt that he would most like to meet the boy. The prophecy applied to the Dark Lord, which was his horcrux rather than him.
Unbound by any chains of fate or human compassion, Tom left the country and waited once again for Voldemort to rise. There was still so much to learn and what with Potter growing up under Dumbledore's tutelage now, time had once again become an issue.