I was Tom Riddle.
I was that "dumb kid" you saw on the streets, holed jeans, dirty face, messed up hair, etc. I was that kid people sniffed at as they hustled by in their Christmas shopping. The kid who got nothing on Christmas.
Everybody at the homely orphanage I lived at called me "Thomas". My name wasn't "Thomas". It was Tom. Like a tom cat. Tom Marvolo Riddle. The middle name from my grandfather, the dead guy buried somewhere in the states, where he died. The first and last names from my father, the jerk who left my mother when he found out about her secret. Tom. Not Thomas. Tom.
Sisters Rosala and Danielle weren't too fond of me. I didn't do anything to raise myself in their sights, like the dimwitted Kevin Prewitt or smart, popular Joseph Potter. Joseph Potter. How I hated him. We were competitors at everything we did, thought people often confused us as twins. I hated everything about him. His charisma, his personality. I hated him with every pore of my body. It was five days after my eighth birthday when the hatred grew to all-out fury. A young, smart-looking couple came to the dirt-filled orphanage, smiling and pleasant. The woman had soft, curly brown-blonde hair, blue eyes, and very white teeth that showed when she smiled. Her husband was dressed in shades of brown, smoked a pipe, and had an easy smile. He laughed constantly.
I told the other kids at the orphanage not to bother them, that they were MY family. Joe didn't listen to me one whit. The next day, first thing in the morning, he walked over to them and introduced himself with a big grin, laughing and smiling constantly. Occasionally, he'd send little smirks in my direction. I glared at him until Sister Danielle called me back to my chores.
They picked Joe.
MY family picked Joe. MY family picked my worst enemy, the terrible Joseph Potter. They, MY family, walked off with Joe, beaming broadly at their new son, while I stood in the background, blood simmering, as my dreams were shattered. From then on, I was changed. I barely spoke. I glared sullenly during all of my studies. I participated in no sporting activities. Everybody avoided me. I was a head taller than most of the people and thin. They thought of me as menacing. Soon enough, I began to think of myself as that, too.
Tom Riddle, the danger to all society, Kevin called me. He was the wildest one in our group of boys. A month after my tenth birthday, he'd had enough of me. He came at me with his Stav, a sharp piece of metal that he'd picked up off the street. I saw that threatening point swoop at me and dodged. But my arm swung out and connected with the point of the blade.
Kevin screamed suddenly as the blade dug into my arm. He found himself flying backward as if somebody had shoved him. But I hadn't touched him and there was nobody near enough to shove him. The blade ripped into my arm in a jagged pattern and blood, my blood, dripped out. My arm burned like a five-alarm fire.
"What's going on in here?" demanded a sharp voice . Four heads snapped up guiltily as I stared at my bleeding, burning arm, biting my lip.
"Sister Danielle!" Kevin said, scrambling to his feet and pointing at me. I noticed that the stav had skittered out of sight. I searched around frantically for it. "I accidentally knocked him into the dresser and he cut his arm! He shoved me!"
"I did nothing of the sort! You attacked ME!" I yelled back. My blood simmered and my face grew red. I angrily brushed black hair out of my face and glared at the shorter boy. "Sister, he's got a thing he called a stav and he cut my arm with it! Look! You can't cut an arm like that on a dresser."
They believed Kevin.
I screamed with rage into my pillow, enraged that I couldn't do anything else. After all, I'd gotten attacked by Kevin, and he got away free and I hadn't done a thing and gotten punished! My pride burned with the unfairness of it all.
The Hogwarts letter came the next year. I had grown even taller and had a lightning-shaped scar on my right arm. Everybody hated me and it was their only pleasure to yell at me. Kevin Prewett also received one of the letters, too.
To make matters worse, after I'd gotten the King's Cross station, managed to find the barrier, and gotten on the Hogwarts Express, I sat alone in the compartment, looking around, for a few seconds before Joe Potter himself entered, a bunch of cronies surrounding him. His eyes flared open as he recognized me as one of the boys from his short stay at the orphanage and his worst enemy. "Tom Riddle?" he asked, his voice sneering. "How'd you get in here?"
"I'm a wizard, too!" I said, indignant.
"You? Silent Tom? A wizard?" Joe sneered.
"Yes, I, Tom M. Riddle, am a wizard, so bug off!" I said, my voice menacingly quiet. I glared with hatred at the boy who had carelessly ruined my life. Slowly rising to my feet, I dug around in my robes pocket for the wand that I'd bought at Diagon Alley. "Get out of here, Joseph."
Joe plunked himself down in a seat, smirking. "There's nothing you can do to me, either," he gloated. "You'd get a detention."
Detentions didn't bother me and I said so. I had a paperback copy of Curses and You in my other pocket and I'd memorized several of the spells. I whipped this out and waved it in his face. "Get out of here before I employ my knowledge of several painful curses on you," I threatened.
"Yeah, right, like you could," Joe shot back.
Two words. Two little words changed the fate of myself and the fate of many others. Until then, Joe and I were simple enemies in a very mild war. After that, we were archenemies, aiming to kill each other.
"Voccidus suegnahc!" I shouted. A bunch of green sparks shot from my very powerful wand. Joe's eyes went wide and he clutched his throat.
"What'd you do?" he asked, his voice sounding like he'd swallowed helium.
"Oh, I changed your voice," I said, tucking my wand back into my robe pocket. I flipped through the small paperback book and read aloud, "The Voice Changing Charm. Changes the voice of those in direction of the pointed wand. Takes eight hours to wear off. The voice changes dramatically from low-pitched to high-pitched with the spell caster's wish."
"You changed his voice?" A crony of Joe's asked.
"That's what I just read you, idiot," I said, closing the book with a snap. Joe glared at me and opened his mouth to speak. Seeming to think better of that, he snapped his mouth shut and gestured at his friends to follow him. One stayed behind. "What do you want?"
"That trick was so awesome! I'm looking for stuff like that to pull on my brother. Say, who are you? Where are you from?" The boy was short and sinister looking and I could tell his mouth was running out of nervousness. "I'm Percival Pettigrew. Everybody calls me Per."
"Tom Riddle." I nodded curtly in his direction and settled myself for a long ride. I'd brought along several spellbooks that I'd gotten at Flourish and Blotts. Curses and You had grown old, but Top 101 Easiest Curses was pretty interesting. Per started on Curses and You, but he had a bit of a hard time. Over Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, we memorized curses and talked about the dark wizards that we'd heard of through books. I'd already done quite a bit of reading on wizards.
The train slowed and I joined the rush of students leaving the train and left my luggage on, just as I was instructed. I watched in slight amusement as Per tucked Curses and You into his pocket, whistling innocently. An average-height girl with silvery blonde hair bumped into me. "Sorry," she said, her tone not so convincing. "Didn't see you."
"It's okay," Per said, answering for me. I wouldn't have bothered to give her an answer, but Per seemed chatty enough to. "I'm Percival Pettigrew and this is Tom Riddle."
"Lana. Lana Grey." Lana looked bored, but I noticed that she boarded the boat with Per and I. The boat rocked beneath me, anything but soothing. After a moment over the rocking water, I leaned over and puked out the side of the boat, the rain washing my mess away from the surface quickly. Apparently, I got seasick easily, having never been on a boat.
"You okay?" Per asked, leaning back and enjoying the rain washing back his brown hair. I shook my head and that slight movement sent me to the side again. I moaned miserably as I surfaced, wiping my mouth. Finally, the small boat nudged land and I crawled out, trying to get the feeling of rocking back and forth out of my system. I was a bit pale as we entered the grand castle of Hogwarts.
The Sorting Hat was rather pointless and I was sorted, along with Per and Lana, into Slytherin. I wasn't too impressed with the feast, for some strange reason. I talked to this ghost named The Bloody Baron, who would grow to become my advisor during my stay at Hogwarts.
Kevin Prewett ended up in the Hufflepuff house and Joe Potter was in the Gryffindor house. I glared silently across the tables and Joe, silent, glared back.
From then on it was a whirl of races and competitions. At everything Joe did, I had to do better. At everything I did, Joe had to do better. We both struggled vainly to best each other, activities that would leave us both panting and exhausted. Whenever we passed each other in the hallways, we would always glare at each other. Occasionally, Joe would put a tripping spell on me that left me stumbling for hours, or I'd shoot him with a boil spell, which made him completely uncomfortable. That happened all of our first year.
The Bloody Baron always met me at five o'clock in the morning. Per never knew about these meetings, but I never missed one. The meeting would always start out with the Bloody Baron demanding that I recite the uses of different sorts of bloods. Then he'd lecture me on Dark Magic and the like. I remember one of those important lessons quite distinctly.
"Tom," he said, wheezing. He always wheezed. I don't know why. "Tom. You're not too popular now, are you?"
I glanced at him sharply. "Why would I need to be popular?" I asked acidly, not too keen on the subject. "It's a boring waste of time!"
"Never," Baron growled, flying up close to my face, "call anything that useful, that helpful in your rise to power a 'waste of time'. You've gotta be well-liked. So they won't think it's you that does something. So that you're not even a suspect." He leaned back, laughing. "It makes you look more innocent."
"More innocent?" I questioned, confused.
"Tom, you're not gonna get out of this school innocent if you're aiming to be a Dark Lord. You may be a mudblood, but you're a Slytherin through and through. I know Slytherins like the back of my hand," he held up his cloudy hand, "and I know you. You're going to pull pranks, commit crimes. Trust me, I see it in you." He tapped my forehead with an index finger, giving my head a cold wash.
"I'm gonna commit crimes?" The words sounded appealing and sickening at the same time. I didn't know what to think.
"Of course! Why do you think I picked you as my apprentice? An orphaned mudblood with a stroke of luck? I see a lot in you, Tom Marvolo Riddle. A lot I cannot confide in you yet. You will know by the end of this term. So start being more popular and go get ready for breakfast."
I left and woke up Per. We headed down to breakfast, myself deep in thought, Per deep in Top 101 Easiest Curses. He had memorized 89, he said. That morning, I made some attempts to join in the conversation. Lana and Per thought I was crazy until I slipped them notes in History of Magic about what I was doing. Professor Binns had no idea how much note-passing went on in his class.
It took two weeks for Per, Lana, and I to rise on the popularity charts. And in those two weeks, the Bloody Baron grew more and more pleased with my efforts. "Good! Good!" he chirped, looking thrilled. "You, Tom, are the whole new beginning. You, my boy, are the Heir of Slytherin."
"What?" I asked, leaping out of my seat. "I'm the what?!"
"The Heir of Slytherin, of course. Your direct ancestor was Salazar Slytherin. Tomorrow you leave for that dirty, rat-filled orphanage you grew up in. In three months, you will return for your quest to find The Chamber of Secrets."
***
Three months passed. I returned to Hogwarts, smelling of dirt and grime. The air at Hogwarts was new and fresh and I breathed deeply several times, thinking gladly about how I wouldn't have to boat across the lake to get there. Before I knew what had happened, school was back full-swing. Every minute was taken up by Quidditch practice (Joe was the Seeker for the Gryffindor team, so I had to beat him), researching the Chamber of Secrets, and homework. I made sure that I was well-liked by everybody but Joe's little crew.
Two years slipped by, a roller coaster of high times at Hogwarts, studying dark magic secretly, and then rocketing downwards for long summer breaks at the orphanage. I grew taller and thinner, with a broad smile gleaming on my face. The smile turned to a sinister look whenever I was with Per or Lana. I was the ringleader and they were the henchmen and nobody objected.
"Aha!" I cried, looking up from the book I was hunched over. I gave a sinister simper. "I do believe I know where the chamber is." I slammed the book shut and hid it under the bed.
"So, we're going there tonight?" Per asked, looking up from his latest curse book. Lana shrugged and packed her pack of Tarot cards away. She wasn't much of a Divinator, but the cards had been a birthday present from her uncle.
I grinned. "Of course."
The chamber was dark and cool. Per and Lana seemed a little uncomfortable, but, Slytherin's one and only heir, felt at home for once in my life. Giant pillars of stone, snakes sculptured into them, towered from floor to high ceiling. Bones lay all over the place on the warm sandy ground. I loved it. The warm, dry air, the feeling of sand underneath my boots, the sight of flickering torch light.
"Who goes there?" a sinister voice hissed.
"It is I," I shouted in Parseltongue, "Heir of Slytherin!" Up ahead of me, Salazar Slytherin's mouth opened and a giant snake started to worm its way out. Lana and Per hid their eyes, but I feasted mine over this tremendous beast. The crushing power of the muscles, the beautiful, synchronized movements, all mine to control. I had POWER!
"Master," the evil voice hissed.
"Yes, I am your master!"
I laughed, my laughter shrill and evil. Even Per and Lana looked a little scared as I collapsed to the sandy floor, laughing with greed and desire and evilness. Then, abruptly, I stopped and turned to face the basilisk. "I have one command."
"Yess?"
"Kill Joseph Potter."
***
A year of the attacks passed. To my disappointment, Joe was only petrified. Then I fouled up. I sent the basilisk up when Myrtle, an annoying second-year had been in the bathroom. She had glanced full into the eyes of the basilisk and died.
Hogwarts was going to be shut down.
And I would have to go back to the orphanage. A sixteen-year-old half-trained Dark Lord at an orphanage. I searched vainly for somebody to blame for the attacks.
And found him.
Rubeus Hagrid. Giant of a thirteen-year-old, rough, wild, always trying to keep dangerous pets. Perfect. He even had the perfect pet that would do a trick. A spider named Aragog.
I went to talk to Professor Dippet, the headmaster, then confronted Hagrid, who knew his monster to be the wrong one. To ensure that I would be able to come back for the basilisk later, I planted my sixteen-year-old self, my memories, my personality, my LIFE into a diary and gave it to Lana.
Per and Lana called me "Voldemort". The name fit better than Tom ever would. Everybody would grow to fear "Lord Voldemort". The name stuck with me through the rest of Hogwarts and on into the years where I slipped deeper and deeper into the Dark Arts.
I cannot begin to tell you how evil I have become. I have slipped deeper and deeper into the dark and dreary depths of evilness, covered with a veil of my own sheer power. My blood runs thick with evil, stopping the passages for short times. What was the handsome young man is gone now. I stand here alone, laughing, with Kevin Prewett's blood on my hands.
I laugh and I laugh and laugh until I cannot stop laughing.
Kevin Prewett, the boy who carved a lightning bolt on my arm as a mere eight-year-old, is dead. Killed by me in cold blood.
And I laugh.
I am Lord Voldemort.