A look at Voldemort's final moments through his eyes. First person POV Voldemort seems to be the fanfiction equivalent of Sasquatch, many people think it must exist but no one has ever actually seen it. This is a notoriously challenging perspective and I took a risk using this particular POV, so review and let me know how I did.

I do not own Harry Potter. If I did the series would center on Tom Riddle and there would be about four times as many books.

I should have seen this coming.

Whether I am truly so often at fault or fate has marked me an enemy I will never know. There was a time when I was favored by fortune and I've no shame in the admission that I took it and turned it to my advantage. It was what any wise soul would have done but perhaps souls are the problem and I ought not address them.

Luck, shall I call it luck? I disdain playing the odds, chance is my rival and she is truly a clever foe. I much prefer not to gamble and to instead tip fate in my favor, for nearly five decades it served me well. I once believed there were no obstacles that could not be surmounted by a superior mind but I have been proven wrong by life, by happenstance, not for the first time.

If this is the destiny of all who reach too high, to be undone by their own ambition, I must question why. And to what end. I can discern no purpose in punishing those who dared to dream beyond the prison of convention and saw infinite possibility. We are not meant to be equals, of that much I am certain. Life is not fair and most only just survive, some do not survive at all. It is simple fact, neither good nor tragic, existing absolutely and elegantly.

Still, there are those who rise above and search for the truth in all of it. I have have ascended far beyond my assumed limits to understanding, the magic is intrinsic to me and I to it. I own freely to accusations of pragmatism, though I loathe being called a man with "Everything and Nothing". The perception that I am somehow lacking is ill conceived and ignorant, assumed by those who are unable to recognize that emotional bonds are fleeting and empty.

Knowledge, actions, those are the things that define the individual. I am unique in that I am not bound by fear as those around me seem to be. They are weak, too shakable in what they know to be true of themselves to be willing to stand alone. Their ties to one another are strong indeed, but only in that they are chains masquerading as a life line, giving them a false sense of significance. They are deluded. But I, I am awake. I have changed the face of this world and shaped history to my liking, I will not be forgotten.

Still, I feel there is more I could do, given enough time. Alas, Chance and Fate's cruel sibling is not on my side either and they know my weakness. My mind, my accomplishments, they are immortal but flesh is traitorous and can be broken. Has broken.

I am about to die.

Seventy one years I've lived, a frightfully common and entirely insufficient span of time. It is the very thing I have sought to avoid, I can't see the reason in death, the notion it's self is a torment to me. Everything I have made myself, everything I have mutilated or sacrificed in pursuit of the gift of more time, useless, undone. It is the great cosmic joke, it took me nearly three quarters of a century to become what I am, yet it takes the space of a breath to undo it.

I thought if my final moments ever came I would know terror. Countless nights spent with the walls closing in, dread gnawing at me, and my heart shuddering hard in my chest fixed the conclusion firmly in my mind. I thought that when I met death's cold eye it would be more of the same. Yet the moment has come and the dread has been forgotten. I was so very wrong.

I am not afraid, I am angry.

Everything I am is awash in fury, resisting, thrumming mutiny because this can not be the end. Can not be right. My devotion to my goal was perfect and failure is not something I have any history of or tolerance for. The only thought that can form through the fog of rage is "No". It is denial and frustration and if my voice hadn't already gone I would be screaming it. This is not what I meant for it all to come to. I do not want to die here.

I wish I could move, I want to be able to move so badly. I long to reach out and kill the boy who set me on the path that has lead me to death. The child who preaches lies, inspires false hope, stands in opposition to all that I believe in. All that I know. He does not deserve to exist.

I suppose eventually the fear will return but for now my own curse tears into me and there is numbness blossoming in my chest, spreading out. It feels like fading. No matter how I fight, no matter the strength of my will to continue, it is consuming and cold and a world of power beyond mine.

And then there is something breaking, something within. Agony rises, white hot and splintering. My world narrows to the slow creep of destruction that scorches it's way up and will not separate from the blood halted in my chest or the marrow of my bones and it all seems to be burning and pulling apart. I am the pain and every place it touches there is wicked laughter that echoes and mocks me, says that I am my own executioner. Yet the cruel voice is my own, it is distinct, it is familiar, and above all it speaks the truth. A single notion that resounds with a perfect sort of finality and in that last fraction of a second I come to a revelation too late.

I am angry at myself.

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