"I've never done this before," the man admitted.

James Warren took in his patient. Tall, thin, pale. Dressed in neat khaki slacks, a white long sleeve shirt, and a grey vest. The very model of a neat, polite young man.

The patient took in the room. It was on the small side, but gave the impression of space. A mahogany chair, a plush green couch, and a ceiling fan making lazy circles. A window with wine colored curtains drawn back made the lamp by the chair unnecessary.

Warren smiled. "Please, have a seat, Mr. Riddle. We have all the time in the world."

"I prefer not to use that name anymore."

Warren scanned the sign in sheet. It was right there in thin, snaking calligraphy. Thomas Riddle. "It's what you signed in with."

"I know. My Mugg- my bank account is in that name. But if we are to talk and connect, it will not be under that name."

Warren nodded. Problems with the family. The father, most likely, if he hated his last name so. "I understand. Then what shall I call you?"

The patient was silent for a while, pondering. "I've not decided," he said at last. "I went by a nickname in school, but I don't know whether I want to keep it. I suppose you can call me Salazar until I decide on a proper name."

"Salazar. Unusual choice. As long as you're picking random names, why not George? Or Frank?"

The young man quirked a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "It's not random."

"So, now what?" Salazar asked. He was reclined in a comfortable couch with deep green cushions. It was just long enough to reach his heels.

"Now, we talk." Warren smiled a trustworthy smile.

"About what? As I said before, Mr. Warren, I've never done this before."

"Anything. Anything that's on your mind, or troubling you."

"I see. So there's no, how would you say, limits on what is spoken. I just speak my thoughts and you interact." Salazar sounded as if he were memorizing the rules to a new and complicated game.

"That's right."

Salazar went silent for a while. Warren thought that he had never met a man who could go silent with that kind of finality. When Salazar choose not to speak, it was as if a death sentence had just been passed somewhere near by.

"Have you thought much about dying, Mr. Warren?"

Warren thought for a moment. "I suppose we all have, at that," he said.

"There are only two options, as far as I can make out. Either there is something afterwards, or there is not. If there is, it will be something beyond understanding. Something that we cannot prepare for in any way. Or, there is nothing. Just an eternity of oblivion. No, not even that. Oblivion implies an observer who realizes that there's nothing. You just stop. Your body will be there, stuck in your best robes in a wooden box and rotting like so much meat, but you won't be there. You won't even be."

Warren tapped a finger on the side of his chin, concentrating.

Salazar continued. "I can't stop thinking about it, Mr. Warren. Soon, on an actual day in the future, I will experience something vast and unknowable, and I just can't handle it. And there's nothing I can do to stop it."

"These are feelings that we all have, Salazar," Warren said. "We spend our whole living fleeing death, but of course we can't. None of us get out of this world alive, I'm afraid. But that's not the whole picture, is it? We have lives to live. Joys to experience. We have people around us to love and cherish, sons and daughters to raise. Focusing on death does not stop it. But I truly believe that focusing on life will get us through the worst of times."

Salazar frowned. "I'm not sure you comprehend me. I'm going to die and you are talking about families and joy and things. These may well be nice and pleasant for all I know, but I am certain that they don't solve the problem. Death is coming regardless of how I live my life. What solutions do you have for that?"

"None," Warren sighed. "But would I be correct in saying that your family life was less than ideal?"

"What do you mean?"

"You are awfully quick to dismiss the joys of family."

"I never knew my mother," Salazar said. In Warren's opinion, he seemed to be opening up a little, getting comfortable. "She died giving birth to me, and I grew up in an orphanage."

"What about your father? Did he die too?" Warren somehow didn't think so. He was experienced in the world of emotional trauma, and knew how these things could go.

"No," Salazar said. He shifted on the couch, studying the floor with hooded eyes. "He died just recently, actually. that's part of why I came to you. But at the time my mother gave birth to me, he had abandoned her. Just threw her out into the cold; homeless, penniless, and heartbroken."

"That was a very terrible thing for him to do," Warren said. He used his firmest voice, and injected as much strength into the sentence as he could. It was often important for patients to hear their grievances were justified, especially if the affirmation came from an authority figure.

"Yes, it was," Salazar said. "I cannot in any way called the first ten years of my life happy. But unhappiness often breeds wisdom, I find. I learned a great deal about how the world operates in that orphanage."

"Oh."

"The ones with power shape the world for the ones without."

"That's one hell of a lesson for a child to learn, Salazar."

"Quite."

Warren leaned forward, rubbing his face absently. "I know that children can be cruel, and that a kid without parents can be an easy target. But there's so much more to the world than the strong hurting the weak. Surely you've seen glimpses of that?"

Salazar thought hard. "No. I'm afraid I've seen no such evidence. Even the nuns' attempts at instilling virtue in our little hearts demonstrated my observation. All their authority came from the fact that they could deprive us of food and shelter- that is, they knew they could dominate us because we depended on them. They wouldn't abandon us, of course. Not without considerable provocation. It would ruin their self-image as decent folk. But it's true nonetheless."

Warren sighed. "Salazar, I hate to say it, but you have an unhealthy world view. Take it from someone with no power over you. Viewing the world like that, seeing it as dog eat dog, is an artificial construct. Had you grown up with a pair of good parents looking out for you, do you think you'd reach the same conclusions?"

Salazar considered the question seriously. "Perhaps not. It is impossible to say."

"Well, then why continue using such a destructive lens to view your life? You're not doomed to be at war with the world, Salazar, you're not. Change in your life, change for the better, is possible. You just need to decide how your going to live your life. Either as you are... or as something brighter."

"That's a lovely thought," Salazar said. His voice was softer, quieter. He gazed up at the beige ceiling with half-lidded eyes and sighed, as soft as a man could. "It truly is. But I cannot go against the evidence I've seen. Cruelty shapes the world. Love and friendship is a survival mechanism that a school of brainless fish can easily recreate. I just... you talk to me of world views, Mr. Warren. Reality, it seems to me, does not care how you view it. It just is. I do not see how my unhappy childhood can affect the evidence of my eyes."

Warren nodded. "No one believes they have a worldview, Salazar. They all think that they alone see the real world. If you can just-"

"Excuse me, Mr. Warren," Salazar said. "I want your opinion on something."

He sounded almost brokenhearted.

"If you could live forever, would you?"

Warren answered immediately. "Yes."

Salazar smiled. "And if you were forced to pay for it?"

"How much?"

"The amount doesn't matter. Just say that you'll live the rest of eternity with the price tag around your neck. Would you still do it?"

Warren cocked his head and regarded his patient. He sensed that something deep lay beneath this hypothetical. "I couldn't say. It depends on the specifics."

"I would," Salazar stated. "I would pay anything at all. I think that, according to you, that is part of my problem. I would do anything to keep death well away from me. And I would do anything to make sure that I am always the powerful one, never the powerless. I suspect you find this disheartening, but you know, I do not care."

Salazar smiled. Something about the curve of his mouth suggested mockery. "If I had to choose between you world view and mine, mine would win. Yours is simply too fanciful for me to take seriously."

The nice, polite young man seated himself upright on the couch and stood.

"Salazar-"

"Good day, Mr. Warren. I am sorry to have wasted both of our time." He bowed slightly from the waist as Warren struggled to his feet.

"Salazar, please. It's only our first session. Why not make an appointment for this same time for tomorrow? Or Friday? We've barely scratched the surface."

"Hmm. I might as well be thorough about it," Salazar said, drawing out a long stick from his inner vest pocket. "Petrificus Totalus."

Warren panicked as the jinx froze his body in place. Off balance, he collapsed into his chair and rolled off, bouncing onto the floor. He blinked rapidly, desperate and terrified.

"I will reassume my teenage nickname, I think. My name, my true name, is Voldemort." The young man's soft and polite tone turned to a snarl on the last word. "I think that you of all people would appreciate the propriety of it, assuming you are familiar with the French tongue."

The young man no longer looked quite human. It was as if all semblance of humanity had been stripped from him, leaving only a man-shaped body and a demon peeking out from behind black eyes.

Warren attempts at screaming resulted only in forceful puffs of breath from a clenched mouth.

"I thank you for nothing, Mr. Warren," Voldemort said. "Avada Kedavra."