Official Disclaimer: I own nothing. Nada. Not even the (nonexistent!) church. J. K. Rowling, the second wealthiest woman in Great Britain who should be the actual wealthiest (come on, folks: Madonna, J. K. Rowling; "Material Girl," Harry Potter. Maybe OoP will make them even), owns all the characters, all the places, and all the spells. Don't sue me!
"Rain in the Night"
I cannot decide whether or not this evening should be so beautiful. At any rate, it is. Tonight's sunset isn't classically spectacular; there are too many clouds to the west for that. The sky merely fades from the blue of day to white to pink, then, low to the horizon, purplish dark. As I stand watching, the swollen red sun sinks into the dark. Still, there's wind, slight but present, and smelling of freshly turned earth—I hear it moving the trees in the forest behind me, like the murmuring of spirits. I hear occasional birdsong.
I'm going to kill a man tonight.
No, no: it's all wrong. This evening is too soothing, too peaceful. As if the weather can ever really be wrong; weather is one of those factors which are uncontrollable. There's nothing wrong with tonight, any more than there was anything wrong with the day before yesterday. I'm expecting perfection, and nature will never conform (I know this).
Tonight will be perfect. It will be beautiful, so I suppose the sunset is somewhat fitting.
It would be erroneous to say I've waited a long time for this night. I've waited forever. I've waited for more than time, from since before I became conscious of the ticking of the clock and the passing of days; I've waited since before I was born through my mother and through the blood in her veins. I've waited since before I even knew I was waiting (I know this also).
With every step I take I feel the power coursing in me, power that connects me to the ground I'm walking on and the air I'm breathing, because I wield the supreme power of nature: death. I am light, smooth as water yet walking on air.
To put it in words my schoolmates would understand, you don't want any of this. Don't fuck with me.
Profanity: I put myself to shame. Sometimes I suppose it's simply necessary to stoop to the common speech, though, so soothing to belt out the word and feel it on your lips and have it out in the open. Or maybe I just enjoyed the stricken looks on their faces. Even I'm not above that, I'll be the first to admit.
I'm standing in a graveyard right now. I didn't plan it this way, of course; there was no way I could have known whether the bastard lived near a graveyard or not. It seems to be a private cemetery, a family one I mean. There's no church nearby. It's rained here recently; I can tell from the mud that coats my shoes whenever I walk across the relatively fresh graves nearer the house. It hasn't rained in the past two days. Though if that cloud bank to the west gets any darker it may rain soon. That would be fitting weather. Perhaps a storm. A flash of lightning illuminates the looming figure—
Silly. I'm being a child.
I'll never be a child again, not after tonight. I realize this, and I embrace it (was I ever really a child?). I'm resting my hand on an old gravestone, cracked and weather-pitted with moss growing over top the face with lettering. It is illegible; it is falling apart. I remove my hand and walk on, the dusk breeze growing stiffer.
Any person who has looked a man in the eyes and struck him dead is no longer a child. And that's what I'm going to do, now, tonight. Soon. So soon, and I tremble with anticipation, my lips forming the words that will kill him. He lives there. In that house up there, on the hill, that large and beautiful house with five servants and a cook who will tell you most any odd thing you want to know provided you keep the sherry coming. Dear soul, I do hope she will be able to find employment after tonight. She has been most helpful, Muggle though she is. I didn't even have to resort to magic. Except for the Polyjuice Potion necessary to disguise myself, of course. I don't need any ambitious Ministry worker connecting the dots and showing up in my school dormitory.
I'm not in disguise now. He will look into my eyes. He will see me. I wonder what he will think of what he sees. I don't cut a very intimidating figure. Physically, I mean. I am tall but very thin; some find my dark hair and fair skin unsettling but still others find it another trait to be ridiculed. I almost wish he ridicules me, just so I have even more reason to make him afraid, to murder him and laugh. Look here, Riddle: laugh if you want, laugh at this skinny, pale teenager who threatens you.
You'll regret it. Will he look like me?
New line of sight: away from the house, back toward the dark forest that laps at the graveyard's edges. I do recognize the irony, you understand; I do realize how close I am traversing to foolishness by loitering in a cemetery before I kill him. How was I to know whether the bastard lived next to a graveyard or not? How was I even to know where he lived? It took me four whole years to find the bastard. He hides well, even when he's not hiding from anything. I smirk. I wonder if he even knows I exist. I wonder if it will mean anything to him. I wonder—
The cry of a bird, from over my left shoulder. If it's a raven I'm going to hex myself. How was I to know the bastard lived next to a graveyard? Damn him. I'm suffocating. I am light. I am light—
Lord Voldemort strikes again, right? He skulks the graveyard and ponders the mystic meaning in the setting sun; he calls his father a bastard and grinds his teeth at the fine old house up on the hill. He kicks a tombstone, how cunning! And then to avenge his aching toe he blasts the grave marker into a million pieces! No, it's all wrong; the spell didn't hit right. Half the stone is still left sticking out of the ground; I'm losing my focus, the pitch of the spell as it traversed the air, it was too low, no, no, all wrong. I can't breathe. I can't move.
—I can't be seen. Only now does it occur to me the noise I have made; stupid, stupid! Into the woods. With a parting glance behind me, toward the old house framed in blood-red light, I move swiftly toward the forest. Through gravestones. This cemetery isn't well-kept; I am moving through weeds and tall grasses gone to seed with every step. Few of the gravestones are even legible. These Muggles don't even honor their dead. I suppose they might not even care about the half-destroyed tombstone I have left…
I reach the perimeter of the gravestones, and turn back. No one is coming to investigate. I suppose that makes sense; it is off-night for all the servants. According to the cook, that is. I shift my feet on the sandy dirt, straining, eyes searching the gathering darkness, the spirit-murmuring behind me even louder with proximity. Except at this range it doesn't sound like murmuring. It simply sounds like wind in the trees of a forest at dusk. No one is coming. Stupid Muggles—I shouldn't even have worried.
Graveyards are commonly avoided by Muggles, you know. They have a curious fear of them, as if the spirits of the dead reside where their bodies lie. Which makes no sense, as even in Muggle stories a ghost always haunts away from the body, either in the place he died or in a place he knew well. I got a lot of that indoctrination growing up in the orphanage—never disrespect a grave, never do anything joyful in a cemetery. And never ever go into a graveyard after dark! Because then the witches will get you! I always loved that part. Supplied by the other boys, of course, never the nuns, because magic doesn't exist. After I was enrolled at Hogwarts, I always found such stories humorous. How I wished to find a graveyard to haunt! Just to prove them wrong. And prove them right. I just wanted to haunt something, to be the nightmare figure in someone's dreams for years to come.
I was a child then. Eleven, even twelve. Another shade of irony: Lord Voldemort, childhood far removed, haunts this dusk-stained graveyard years after his last Witches' Sabbath fantasy. I chuckle. With such a convenient private cemetery, I do wonder if the wizards in this vicinity would ever have gathered here…just to poke some good fun at the local Muggles (dancing on the graves, hah! In which are probably the Riddles of bygone days).
—am I truly a child, then? That all I can think of now are the silly fantasies of an eleven-year-old boy? I'm going to kill a man tonight. I wonder if my mother ever danced here.
Into the forest. Already painted in shadows, trees cast red in the setting sun, knots staring down like eyes. No. And now I reach the height of foolishness, the height of stupidity, the pinnacle of childishness as I become afraid of the very elements I control! For what, with my wand, can I not change and manipulate at my discretion? For what object or creature can I not Transfigure? What animal can I not kill? What shadow can I not destroy with magic light? None! All! Even a simple wizard is safe in a forest at night!
Idle thoughts, idle fantasies, a schoolboy on a lark! Playing hero and villain with the world! If my mother could see me now—if my grandfather—his father—I am the living repository of the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself (you see, you are not dealing with a simple schoolboy after all). I proved myself Slytherin's heir two years ago.
And now I am suffocating. No, not suffocating, not anymore. Free. Free, but too free; movements so unrestricted that I lose my purchase, I claw upon the air. Smooth as water, yes, but insubstantial as mist, and I know my powers are back; I feel the magic in me though such a feeling is impossible, I could obliterate a gravestone now so that not even pieces remained and still I am insubstantial, clawing at running water passing me by, powerful, oh yes! but waving my wand at the universe, a child telling Time to stop his interminable march forward. A warrior fighting off Death with a sword. And this is somehow worse, far worse than suffocating like an imbecile because I have the power, I feel it, I realize my potential, and all my cries of vengeance are so much Quixotic whining against nature and against her laws.
This is Lord Voldemort, the Heir of Slytherin, child with wand raised to the new-coming night; this is Lord Voldemort, this is Salazar's long-removed son, this, this schoolboy, cowering on the forest floor under tree knots which are transformed into the eyes of graveyard statues! Graveyard statues, the graveyard outside our church-run orphanage, the one I entered at night once on a dare, the moonlight beaming down on marble and granite heads and eyes. I wasn't there to win a bet. Well, of course I was there to win a bet, but that wasn't the real reason I was there. I was looking for my mother's grave.
I was seven years old at the time. Another, different, child, shouting challenges and searching foolishly for what he knew he would never find.
My mother left me at an orphanage in Birmingham. At age five the overcrowded Birmingham institution sent me to London. My mother died in Birmingham. But I was sure as hell going to find her grave in London.
Waving my wand at the night. Telling Time to stop; telling Death to bend himself to me; telling Heredity to make herself untrue and purge my blood of her stain. His stain. Telling the weather to be perfect. Telling Slytherin…what am I telling Slytherin? Surprise, look who's coming to dinner? Look at the Heir who is yours and whom fate chose to bestow your gift upon? Look at the schoolboy, the silly child who sees the eyes of time in the knots of trees and hears spirits murmuring in the wind and gives himself the name Lord Voldemort, fancying himself a superhero (banish the Muggle thought) come to conquer the world? Who envisions a perfect night on which to murder his father?
I chuckle, wondering vaguely if it is with madness that I laugh now. I realize, I always have realized it: I put too much stock in mysticism. Romanticism. Yet there's a fine line between mystic coincidence and the circumstances of fate.
And I do expect fate to be on my side. How could I not? I am the Heir of Salazar Slytherin, not some simple schoolboy after all; fate foretold of and prepared for my coming. No, I can't expect perfection of the weather tonight. No, I cannot expect the wind to sound like spirits; no, I cannot expect…yet…anything of that magnitude.
It will come with time. For I am Lord Voldemort.
I am going to kill a man tonight. I'm going to kill him now. There will be no perfect time; I've put the deed off searching for that perfect moment, when the spirit-murmuring and blood-red sun and chilling breeze would all unite into one picture whose savage beauty would propel me on to my task. I do not need it.
I need only my wand, which I twirl between two fingers, watching it emit some idling sparks in green and red; I need only my wand, and now I am up, and moving, glancing up into the trees whose knots are only knots, whose branches are only branches and whose density conceals a graveyard in which I am sure no witches ever danced. The air is crisp, cold, the earlier breeze stiffening into a wind driving in the weather system to the west.
I step out of the spirit-murmur lapping at the edges of the graveyard. Cross sandy soil to the first gravestones, walk through. Stones crumbling, stones already crumbled, one stone half-blasted away. My eyes are fixed on the house. I wonder if my mother ever danced—
I pause, almost curse, but no need. Pants only snagged on a briar bush. Forward again. Mud now, I have reached the newer graves; a quick charm has me through it without a problem and I am on the lawn now, on the lawn of the house, walking up the sloping hill, wand out and swinging jovially at my side, hello father, were you expecting me? I want to laugh, but something within me cautions of a grave moment, inappropriate for mirth. Then I do laugh, because what is holding me back? I am Lord Voldemort. I am light, smooth as water yet walking on air.
I've reached the shadow of the house. The air is suddenly much colder—I laugh softly, enjoying Nature's accommodation of me. Small trees here and there; well-kept gardens with flowers whose perfume makes my nose wrinkle. Too sweet. But then my tastes tend to run morbid. The lush green grass now looks gray under my feet, sicklied over by the wan and reddish light. I see a back door.
So easy, all so easy; these Muggles must live without fear of robbery. Of course the door will be locked, but there is no Muggle lock in existence which alohomora cannot open on the first try. But I will not need alohomora. Because I am going to the front door.
I begin around the house, stepping out of the mansion's shadow into the sunlight. The sun is shining directly in my face now, my eyes squinting and searching for a servant or two on the loose. I twirl my wand. It emits sparks, hot-white and momentarily as blinding as the sun. I smile.
And I reach the front of the house, see the wide and spacious front porch; wicker chairs on either side of a stained oak door with a darker wood handle, all very elegant set against the white of the porch and house front. Green shutters. I pause for a moment to marvel at the irony, then I am on the front step, then I am on the porch, then I am stopping before the door, then I am putting my wand away.
For now.
If I were to follow the conventions of father-son meetings, I would take a deep breath at this point and straighten my hair and clothing. I smirk. Then I reach out a hand, fingers tingling slightly with anticipation, and take hold of an ornate brass knocker. I let it fall. Once. Twice. That should be enough. He will have heard me.
I step back and wait. I hear nothing for a few moments, except for the breeze blowing around the sides of the house.
I bite my lip, then immediately release my grip. There's no need for nervousness. The occupants are in, the servants are out; I have it all from the cook. The sherry-loving cook who was on her third by this point. I bite my lip, then force myself to relax again.
The wind picks up in a momentary gust, chilling the back of my neck and making me shiver. I pull my arms around me in a sort of hug, hunkered against the cold; no one is coming to the door. He isn't home, or he isn't answering; damn the cook and her sherries.
But there's nowhere for me to go now—where, into the village to stay the night in the pub? Stretched out on a no-doubt filthy bed in a Muggle's house?
The wind lifts for just a second, gusts again, lifts; I concentrate on the sound of it, the rise and fall, concentrate so that I almost do not hear the sound of the door. A clicking sound, like someone undoing an inside lock. I freeze. The turning of the doorknob. I snap my head to the front in time to see the door open, in time to see her step out of it. Not my father. A woman, around fifty by her body and wrinkled hands but with a face that could be years younger. Rosy-cheeked with delicately sculpted features, long graying blonde hair and a mouth that seems designed to be slightly open in a look of mild surprise. I look into her face, and in her eyes I see reflected the blood-red setting sun.