That's all I can tell you about the Chamber of Secrets. When I wake up next it's the indoors, the underground equivalent of a clear morning, and Harry Potter is sitting next to me, looking utterly exhausted. Covered in dew, is my first thought. I look at him for a minute, wondering where Tom is. Tom. Fog. Words in the wasteland.
Schoolgirl.
Trivial.
The stuff Harry is covered in isn't dew. It's –
Magnetic repulsion.
Tom used me.
Stupid girl.
Foolish.
I let Tom use me.
I almost caused…
Just a friend…
I'm going to be expelled. I'm not proud, you understand, that this was my first thought upon having the reality heaped on me, upon realizing who my beloved Tom was, upon realizing the extent to which I was nothing but a foolish little girl. Call it a defense mechanism. Worry about something else that's less pressing.
Idiot.
No, expelled.
Foolish.
No, expelled.
No, not expelled.
At times in those next few days I sometimes wished I had been punished. There was nothing to think about except for Tom, and my – my silliness – and Harry, and…I almost wished I had been the one doing the attacks – I mean, that it wasn't just my body under Tom's control. Being a monster is better in many ways than being a dupe. Evilness is better than silliness. Triviality. I wished that. I wondered about doing something awful to Harry, to Hermione, to Madame Pomfrey – but then I realized that I didn't know anything awful to do to them. And I was too afraid.
– It helps to talk about it in past tense. That's all I did second year. It wasn't until third year that I would even consider the subject of Tom, of what I had learned, without it becoming a repelling magnet for my thoughts.
And my third year Tom came back. No, not to me, silly – stop looking so frightened. I mean Voldemort came back, at the end of the year. Triwizard Tournament, Cedric Diggory, Harry…you know the story. Everyone knows the story.
I can't help but wonder if it means anything. But it probably doesn't. It's probably just a fact, and I'm trying to add that extra layer to it.
– yes, Tom's insights. Sometimes they're valid.
And no, I don't want to do anything awful to Harry, or to Hermione, or to Madame Pomfrey, or even to Snape, which is the more relevant question. Just kidding. A joke. You can let me joke about this, right? And no, I don't think Voldemort is…well, in his own defense he would claim that he isn't right or good. He just is. But he would be lying.
He says he's rejected morality. He says he is independent of it. He's a bloody liar. He's just adapted a code of morality that goes along with his values – the weak and the stupid are wrong. The strong are right. He is right. I do the same thing. So do you. We all have our unconscious judgments. We can't get rid of the judgments. They are us. But the thing is we realize the tricks our own soul is playing on us.
I wonder if Voldemort even realizes them. It's ironic, because if he doesn't, then by his own standards he is wrong, bad, evil even. If he can't step back and look at himself and abandon those pesky ideas of right and wrong – and whatever other bloody emotional hogwash he's carrying – you get the picture. He'll never be immortal, even if he physically never dies. He's trivial.
Not that I can say much more about myself. I wonder at the changes I've gone through since my third year. Self-consciously, I might add. I've become, more and more, and what's even better I've done it by design – I've become more and more like Draco Malfoy.
– well, I'm flattered, but no, I'm no nicer than Draco. I've just got tact and Draco hasn't, so that you can't tell either way. But we're after the same thing, him and I. And we've got about the same obstacles in our paths. The only difference lies in the ways in which we go about grasping at what we want. That's the only difference. Is one of us right and the other wrong? I personally dislike him with passion. But as for nice and mean, right and wrong, I'm up in the air.
– Tom? – was I talking about Tom? Was I talking about Voldemort? I was talking about Draco Malfoy, the boy who thinks he is Voldemort himself, but no.
Well, have I answered your question now? Have I given you the what? The why?
…you give up? Tell you the answer? Ha hah! Sweetheart, if I had the answer…do you even know the question?
– yes, I think it's cold out here, too. Let's go inside.