This is just a short one-shot that I wrote on a dark winter's evening. I hope someone enjoys!
Lord Voldemort never loved anyone.
He sure as hell did not love me.
The first time I saw Tom Riddle, he did not look at me twice. He was a handsome third year, surrounded by a posse of friends, loved by everyone in the school, and I was just a small first year, clinging to her friend's sleeve, trying desperately to fit in.
He had no reason to see me, but I remember that his eyes locked on mine, just once, before I scurried away after my friend.
I remember that I could not focus on classes for the rest of the day.
Three more years passed in the same way, him not giving me a second glance, me not able to look away. We all knew that he was unattainable – the perfect model student, highest marks, a star Quidditch player, the teachers' favorite, everyone's schoolgirl crush. Even the glimpses of darkness sometimes flashing behind his smirks never deterred me. I could not bring myself to care about all the reasons why not, because I was welcome to fantasies about something that would never happen.
I was safe to imagine those deep emerald eyes looking into my own because it would never be real.
Then the Chamber of Secrets was opened.
That was when everything began to change.
People were turned to stone, just walking in the corridors, and eventually some poor Ravenclaw died in the bathroom. I stopped mooning secretly after my crush and started thinking seriously about what was worth dying for.
I started thinking about what was worth killing for.
A Gryffindor third-year was blamed for the monster, and we all settled uneasily back into old routines. But I couldn't. I had changed during my fourth year; I had turned dark and serious and quieter than ever before, and one by one my friends started to drift away.
The first time Tom Riddle talked to me, I was sitting cross-legged in the corridor across from the girl's bathroom, some advanced spell book on my lap.
He asked me, a prefect in all but voice, what I thought I was doing, sitting in the hall.
I should not remember that moment at all, yet the inflection in his words has struck the memory in my mind forever.
The darkness in his voice called to me.
I told him that I wondered if death stained a place. I told him that I was thinking about what death will do to a soul, because I knew that it had changed mine.
I looked into his eyes then, locking my grey with his green, and he looked back.
I saw him in the corridors, to and from classes, in the Great Hall, on the campus, on the Quidditch pitch, and he saw me as well. Sometimes, I would catch a glimpse of his piercing gaze, and I would look away, because if I could not see when his look ended, I could pretend he still saw me.
The first time I went anywhere with Tom Riddle, it was winter break of his seventh year. We were among only a handful of Slytherins left at Hogwarts, the rest having left for rich pureblooded Christmas celebrations. I was reading in the window of a corridor, everything still and silent, and suddenly he appeared and asked me if I would like to see something.
I looked at him then, and what I saw scared me. I saw someone who had fallen so far, so fast, someone who was reaching out a hand to pull me down with him. But I saw the only boy I had ever seen, and I knew that if I wanted to see anything I wanted to see it with him.
He took me to a dark place in the middle of the forest, where the cold sun could not penetrate the skeletal branches, and he asked me one question.
He asked me if I would follow him to hell.
I believe I began to cry, but I do not quite remember because then he was leading me down a dark path, leading me somewhere I had never been, somewhere I would never escape, and I was asking him just to let me stay.
I do not remember the first time my arm began to burn, though every time it did I was there with my Lord, gazing at him, never once looking away, doing whatever he asked, and I never, ever regretted swearing my soul to those dark, dark eyes.
I believe that my wand did more for him than it ever did for myself, because I lost myself to him the first time I saw him.
I remember the first time I killed. The muggle woman cried and cried, but the light never returned to her son's dead eyes, and soon another tally was added to my list of the dead, and the woman did not make another sound. He watched me, he watched me and he smiled and that was the first time I ever felt like he really saw me, and I knew that some things were worth killing for.
Every time I ended someone else's life, I would remember my Lord, I would remember that nothing mattered but that one fleeting glance. If I obeyed every order, sometimes he might glance at me. Sometimes he might see me, and that was all that ever mattered to me.
The first time I laid with a man, my Lord looked into my eyes and I knew that he saw me. He was not gentle, he was not caring, and he did not believe that I was worth anything to him but another person for him to control, but he saw me.
I knew from the first moment I saw him, years and years before, that I was gone.
Lord Voldemort never loved anyone.
That never stopped me from loving him.
Please review! :) Even if you don't (though I wish you would, please), thank you ever so much for reading.
Edit: That's over 200 views, people! Thank you!