The Freak in the Orphanage
Synopsis: A peek inside the mind of Lord Voldemort, and his drive for greatness.
A/N: Let my writing do the talking. I hope you'll like it.
*1*
Tom stares at the table, now stained with blood. At the last remains of Charity Burbage. He smirks at thought of her execution, at her feeble pleas for mercy, and above all, at her beliefs for which she died. The woman was an ardent muggle-lover, and as a teacher of muggle studies she encouraged her students to mate with muggles. He wants to puke. For it was such an unholy tryst that birthed a freak like him.
A freak. He remembers his early years at the orphanage, trapped with vermin who could never understand him, or his gift. He was the odd boy out, the outcast. The monster. The insults kept ringing within his every dream, and made his every sleeping night a torment, until the day he learned magic, and charmed himself a cure. Tom no longer dreams of being a freak. For he no longer sleeps.
He does not want to be a freak, he knows. He wants to be bigger, and stronger, and better. Bigger than Merlin himself, and his undying legacy. Stronger than the rebels who dare oppose him. And most important of all, to be better than the vermin at the orphanage who dared look down on him.
The first two goals are within his reach, he muses. The last is not. None of those who insulted him are alive any more. They can no longer acknowledge him as their better. Tom himself saw to that. Unfortunately, you can kill a mortal only once.
With regret he shakes his head.
*2*
The suburbs of Little Whinging are alight beneath him, in lines that meet and intersect in a pattern of grids. Even from up here Tom can spot the house in Privet Drive where Potter lives. The arcane enchantments Dumbledore placed allow neither him, nor any of his assassins to attack the boy there. But Potter is about to come of age, and once he does the enchantments will fail. That time is near.
It was a prophecy that made him go after Potter, Tom reflects, as he flies into the clouds like a muggle superhero. And he knows he had to. There are too many similarities between the two of them. Too many, that the boy might one day become a rival and a threat. And yet, he muses, that the boy stands opposite to everything he has stood for. At his darkest of moments, when he cannot lose himself in the joy of bloodshed, Tom resents Potter. The boy has minions who serve him not out of fear or self-interest, but out of loyalty. They never shower him with empty praise and lies of grandeur. While Tom feels that he is surrounded. Not by faces of loyal followers, but by masks that hide fear and disgust underneath.
He still feels like he has not left the orphanage.
*3*
Hogwarts looms in the distance, on the other side of the vast lake. The windows and towers are alight with activity, and the still waters reflect like a mirror. It's too quiet, he knows. Too calm― like one before the storm.
Tom turns back to face away from Hogwarts, to look over the army he's assembled for the storming of his old school. The Ministry has fallen. His opponents are being rounded up for disposal. And after a year of relentless pursuit, Harry Potter is finally trapped with no way out.
He is so close, and yet so far. Tom knows he can never go back. Not as the wide-eyed eleven year old boy who'd just realised that he was special, and not a freak. He is no longer Tom Riddle. That identity is long discarded. He is Lord Voldemort. Greater than old Merlin of legend. Greater than that gay fool Dumbledore, who now lies dead. And certainly greater than a mediocre teenaged wizard who'd escaped him again and again through sheer luck.
And no prophetic words of a seer shall prove him otherwise. Harry Potter has to die.
Harry Potter will die.
And Tom shall no longer be the freak in the orphanage.