A/N: This is a major reboot of the original version of this fic (it bears only a passing resemblance). I'm entering this first chapter for the WA Antagonist POV challenge (although the entire story will not be told from Tom's POV).
"ᴇᴠᴇʀʏ ᴅᴀʏ, ᴇᴠᴇʀʏ ʜᴏᴜʀ, ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴠᴇʀʏ ᴍɪɴᴜᴛᴇ, ᴘᴇʀʜᴀᴘꜱ, ᴅᴀʀᴋ ꜰᴏʀᴄᴇꜱ ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴘᴇɴᴇᴛʀᴀᴛᴇ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴄᴀꜱᴛʟᴇ'ꜱ ᴡᴀʟʟꜱ..."
Chapter One: The Tragedy of Tom Riddle
-Hogwarts, 1943-
The cry of the jackal was high and mournful as it regarded the lone boy standing in the courtyard. Smoke trailed from the fingers of his left hand.
Tom lifted the lit cigarette to his mouth, closed his eyes, and winced. The sound was penetrating. He exhaled bitter smoke, looking around surreptitiously. The last thing he needed was Mulciber or Avery, or worse yet, a professor, coming around the corner.
He did not relish the thought of having to explain a nicotine addiction at this present moment (or any moment at all), because that would require explaining the Blitz, too, and Merlin knows these morons were oblivious to the world war that was currently going on. Pureblood society wouldn't stoop to concerning itself with Muggle politics even if the bombs were exploding over the heads of the entire Sacred Twenty-Eight.
On second thought, he'd quite like to see a bomb exploding over the idiots' heads.
At any rate, he had to be careful. Especially considering what he was intending to do later today. He already had an inordinate amount of detentions with Dumbledore — Professor of Transfiguration and the only person Tom considered a serious threat to his plans — as it were, and unfortunately only a finite amount of patience.
Undoubtedly, this week's session would involve advice on how to make friends and questions as to why he liked to spend so much time alone.
He had to tutor that ditzy Gryffindor girl again today after he finished that extra assignment for Slughorn, and then he had patrol duty tonight with that irritating Ravenclaw git he'd been paired with — oh, damn it all.
That and the essay for Merrythought — how could he have forgotten? He had an eighty-inch final paper due in Defense Against the Dark Arts on Friday, and he hadn't even started it yet.
Even assuming he got through this behemoth of a week and everything went smoothly with the Horcrux, there were still his O.W.L. exams to worry about.
He had better kiss the idea of getting any sleep between now and the end of term good-bye.
It was taking the entirety of his very short patience today not to fly off of the handle at the slightest provocation.
Discovering the basilisk this year had been very, very cathartic.
He just might set it on that Gryffindor girl after this.
He couldn't stand her whiny voice.
Every tutoring session (Dumbledore's idea, of course — probably to keep him exhausted so that he'd slip up and expose himself as the Heir of Slytherin) required increasing amounts of self-control, and most recently, dosing himself with illegally-purchased Calming Draught, not to resort to more… violent methods.
In fact, he only managed to stay sane by imagining her dead body.
This led to unexplainable smiling at very inappropriate points in time.
Just last week, he'd been imagining a particularly calming tableau of her guts on the carpet while she was twittering on about how she'd broken up with her boyfriend.
She'd started bawling.
Honestly, the crying had upset him less than the fact that she'd broken one of his favorite reveries.
Ugh, the crying. He couldn't stand crying.
Tom tilted his head back against the stone wall, inhaling greedily.
If only he could get rid of that crick in his neck.
The smoke stung his throat.
That's better. So much better.
He hadn't intended to come out here today. He'd promised himself that he would quit smoking (about the twentieth time this year).
But he needed this; the heady, pleasurable mix of nicotine, smoke, and rebellion made him feel alive.
That thought was saddening. So few things brought him actual happiness.
Tom inhaled more smoke as he considered this. He worked his shoulders, trying to get rid of the crick.
No, nothing brought him actual happiness. He couldn't remember ever being actually happy.
His mental state instead swung wildly between the extremes of total numbness or quasi-concealed frustration that degenerated into giddy rage.
Melancholia. It was an ugly creature, more alive than he was, and sometimes Tom imagined the black bile bubbling out of his mouth and pouring out of his ears and nose like tar.
Tom glared at the jackal, who continued to regard him steadily with its ancient, liquid eyes.
The jackal howled again; high, piercing, and almost human. Its eyes narrowed to dangerous slits and its disproportionately large ears twitched back and forth.
The cigarette had burned down to a stub between his fingers.
Tom dropped the cigarette on the stone floor and ground the light out with his heel. His mouth tasted foul.
He steeled himself for what he was about to do as he flicked the ashes away from his fingertips.
If he had not been so absorbed in his musings, he might have wondered what a jackal was doing so far north. It was strangely out of place in a medieval Scottish castle.
He might have even taken the presence of the jackal as a bad omen. But Tom was, as a general rule, neither superstitious nor sentimental.
He brushed the hair out of his eyes — he needed a haircut badly, but he hadn't had much time for self-care recently, what with taking vengeance on people who provoked him, keeping the basilisk secret from Dumbledore, and prefect duties — and considered what he was about to do.
He'd been stalking her for a while, that annoying little — Ravenclaw? Hufflepuff? — who cares? — spotty bint with spectacles.
Tom couldn't remember her name either, something like Sibyl perhaps?
What was really important about whatever-her-name-is, was that one, the weepy bint happened to frequent the bathroom with the entrance to the Chamber — that circumvented his recent issues with discreetly transporting a sixty-foot basilisk — and two, nobody liked her and it would take a while for anyone to find her body.
It was a perfect plan. He bounced slightly on the balls of his feet, trying to contain his excitement.
Calm down, he told himself. There will be time for celebration later.
The jackal bared its teeth, crouched to spring in an instant.
It was quite a frightening sight; beady yellow eyes with the pupils shrunk to black points, fur standing on edge as if electrocuted, and a wide-open mouth filled with white daggers.
Tom swore and reached for his wand.
A Stinging Hex should do the trick.
Clearly, the jackal had an acute sense of self-preservation, because it glared at him one last time before leaving, its feet skittering softly on the stone floor of the courtyard.
The jackal turned back to face him at the edge of the courtyard, letting out one more anguished cry before disappearing into the distance.
He was unnerved slightly, but his resolve was unshaken.
Tom did not heed the jackal's warning.
Act I began.
Lurking around the hallways alone might have looked suspicious had Tom not been both a prefect and a loner. He kept a watchful eye out for Dumbledore and was forced to make small talk on the stairs between the second and third floors with Professor Armando Dippet, Hogwarts' well-meaning yet idiotic excuse for a Headmaster.
Who could possibly think that it would be a good idea to make a three-hundred-year-old man the Headmaster of the most prominent magic school in Britain? Wizards aged at a slower rate than Muggles, but the old man was still clearly going senile.
Not that Tom was complaining. Dippet's feeble mind and lax governance of the school was half of the reason he'd managed to get so far with opening the Chamber of Secrets. In fact, Dippet seemed to be very fond of him for some reason.
"Professor Merrythought tells me that you are coming along marvelously in your studies," said Dippet.
Tom grimaced slightly, thinking of the paper he had yet to begin writing.
"Well, Professor Merrythought is an inspiring teacher, sir," he managed to say.
Dippet clapped him on the back, or at least, attempted to. From Tom's end, it felt more like a flutter.
"My dear boy. So brave of you to look out for the other students. You must be worried about all the attacks—"
The irony!
Dippet continued in a sympathetic tone.
"—especially since it seems that Muggle-borns are being targeted."
"I'm a half-blood, sir," Tom said, forcing himself to sound pleasant.
Why did people always forget?
He was the Heir of Slytherin, for Salazar's sake, not some filthy mudblood that Abraxas Malfoy could kick around and taunt.
Even so, Tom wished that there was some way that he could drain every drop of dirty Muggle blood from his veins.
"Oh. Of course. In any case, the professors and I are doing our utmost to find the cause. Do take care, Tom," said Dippet, finally turning to walk slowly up the stairs.
"You too, sir."
Tom let out a breath that he didn't realize he was holding. His blood was rushing in his ears. He hadn't realized that he'd come so dangerously close to losing his temper.
He really needed to stay on Dippet's good side. He had been hoping to get special permission to stay at Hogwarts in the summer and not be forced, yet again, to return to the grey monotony of Wool's Orphanage.
Tom wondered if Dippet had read his letter yet. Probably not. As irritating as Dumbledore was, he seemed to be the only person in Hogwarts other than him capable of getting anything done in a timely manner.
He continued down the stairs to the second floor.
It didn't take long for his target to run into the bathroom, sobbing her eyes out over something about an olive and her glasses. The stage was set.
Tom waited to hear the stall door swing closed before he entered. The sound of sobbing was only slightly muffled.
He hated the sound of crying.
He couldn't remember ever doing it. Silly habit, begging pity from strangers.
Tom Marvolo Riddle did not beg for pity, dirty Muggle blood or not.
He supposed that if he'd had a mother to cry for, the behavior might have been reinforced.
Weeping Sibyl's crying reminded him eerily of the sounds in the orphanage during the Blitz. He did not cry as heaven and earth shook and bombers hummed threateningly above each night.
Instead, Tom would stare up at the moldy ceiling in his room, thinking bitterly that if he were sired by a wizard instead of a useless Muggle, and if his mother had bothered to pick up her wand to save her own life, this wouldn't be his reality.
Tom caught his reflection in the mirror and looked down quickly.
Mrs. Cole, the matron at Wool's Orphanage, had said that he must look like his father since his mother had been 'no beauty.'
This had meant nothing to him as a child, but since Dumbledore had come to tell him that he was a wizard on his eleventh birthday and he'd come to Hogwarts, he had entertained the thought that he resembled his magical relatives and thus his appearance had pleased him.
But now, after hours of research in the Hogwarts library during his first year had revealed that his mother, not his father, was his magical parent, he had been avoiding his reflection.
At sixteen, maybe he should have been worried about the fact that most of the other students in his year had started to pair off — and Tom had no shortage of opportunities, but he had no desire to sacrifice his time and his sanity.
In fact, he had seriously thought about disfiguring himself in some way to avoid the bothersome flirtations of vapid admirers.
Tom shook his head and tried to clear his mind of all thoughts except the task at hand. He stared into the eyes of the snake wrought on the top of the tap.
Open.
He watched with cold satisfaction as the snake's mouth grew and the sink shrunk until there was a hole in the floor large enough for a man to crawl through.
Or, for Tom's purposes, large enough for a basilisk.
He called, and it came, slithering up through the pipe until it filled the small bathroom with poison-green coils.
It looked as if the basilisk had smelled Weeping Sibyl because it was tossing its head excitedly and showing all of its fangs, each as long as Tom's arm.
Tom took care to stay well out of the way of the serpent's snapping jaws. He might be immune to basilisk venom, but it was still incredibly painful, as he'd discovered the first time he summoned the Serpent of Slytherin.
He called out the serpent in Parseltongue, telling it to listen to him and wait to strike.
Weeping Sibyl's stall door opened a crack, and Tom urged the serpent towards it. He could feel the serpent's mind struggling against him, trying to break free and sink its fangs into the girl, but Tom had to restrain it.
This had to be a sterile affair, with no evidence that could lead back to him or the basilisk. There could not be a single mark on the girl's corpse.
And she could not escape. There was no room for error.
Sickening fear coiled in his stomach. What if someone walked in? How would he explain the basilisk without incriminating himself?
That was a silly concern. Dumbledore wasn't going to go into a girls' bathroom and Weeping Sibyl didn't have any friends who would come to look for her.
He had planned this for months. Everything would go smoothly. He was in control of the situation, and in control of the basilisk.
Look at her.
Tom heard the crack as the girl slumped to the floor. He knew she was dead from the basilisk's gaze; he did not need to look as the stall door swung open. He needed to leave as soon as possible; to be seen on the other side of the castle before her body was discovered.
Realistically, he probably had a few hours, but Tom did not take unnecessary risks.
Return, he told the basilisk before opening the bathroom door carefully and slipping out into the empty hallway.
Killing mudbloods was a distasteful and risky activity, but did that matter if he was finishing the noble work of the great Salazar Slytherin?
Tom sighed. At least if he was caught in the hallways, he could claim that he was patrolling the area. As long as he didn't run into Dumbledore, he should be able to continue on to the Slytherin Dungeon safely. And once he was there, he should walk around, be seen by several people, and perhaps talk to a few of them.
Then, he would slip out before the girl's body was found to complete the Horcrux creation.
Maybe killing shouldn't make him feel so calm, but it was truly perfect. Everything had gone according to plan.
And now he had want he wanted. A torn soul.
Now, for Act II.
He'd already prepared the diary to become a receptacle for a fragment of his soul.
All that was lacking was the last step of the process — severing his soul completely.
Finally.
He, Tom Marvolo Riddle — no, Lord Voldemort — was about to take the first step towards becoming immortal. To becoming the greatest sorcerer of all time.
He was about to master the most terrible of all dark magic.
So much for the name-calling and heckling of his classmates. No longer would he be Tom Riddle , the poor, brilliant, Mudblood son-of-a-whore, as Abraxas Malfoy had so generously dubbed him.
He would finally wash himself clean of his sordid beginnings.
Now he was about to meet his destiny.
Tom spoke the incantation.
He had been expecting the pain — but this was pain beyond belief and imagination.
Tom screamed as everything in his body ripped and tore.
He felt his arms and legs being wrenched away from his torso as he collapsed on the stone floor.
His head pounded like someone was hitting it with a sledgehammer, and everything around him dulled. He could barely see the dark ceiling above him or feel the floor beneath him — all that he could concentrate on was despair as he gasped for breath, but each gulp of air felt like swallowing a mouthful of needles.
He choked on the salty tears running down his face.
I am probably going to die.
I am going to die.
I am going to die here.
I am going to die here, alone.
He bit down on his tongue and tasted metal in his mouth.
Help me! Please!
Tom tried, desperately, to cry out for help, not caring who found out what he had done, but all that came out was a pitiful whimper. His vocal cords were torn from screaming.
Then, the pain subsided.
Tom took one painless breath.
Is it done? Is it over?
He felt his body start to disintegrate from his fingertips, watching in numb horror until even his eyes dissolved into dust, settling into the pages of the diary.
Wait. This wasn't supposed to happen!
No!
Stop!
Tom was inside the diary. No, not quite. Even worse. He was the diary.
And he was awake.
Was the other fragment of his soul mindless? An empty body crouched over a book?
Or perhaps, maybe there was nothing left at all.
Maybe the next person to explore the darkest corners of the dungeons would find the diary and his uniform in a neat pile next to his wand.
Tom tried not to think about it. He tried to stay calm.
He had to stay calm.
On the bright side, he wouldn't have to tutor today.
What could have gone wrong?
Maybe the spells he cast to weaponize the diary interfered with the Horcrux creation; maybe that was where he went wrong.
A counter curse?
But he was without his wand and his body.
Even if he had them, Tom knew that such a thing could not be undone. He could not put his soul back together. It was an irreversible process; Magick Moste Evile and Secrets of the Darkest Art had both been abundantly clear on that.
Act III was not going as planned.
Tom Marvolo Riddle was trapped, alone, in the pages of a book, with nothing but regret for company.
For all eternity.
A/N: (2/19/22)
I've taken a bit of liberty with timing/history here — the Blitz (a German tactic where London and other cities were bombed pretty much constantly for eight months starting in September 1940) would've happened during the school year. But it's a defining point in the WWII era in Britain that emphasizes the separation between the Muggle and magical worlds, so I really wanted to include it. And you'll see more of the Blitz later, should you choose to read on.
What you can expect, in terms of updates:
I'm updating weekly on Saturdays, around 1-2 PM PST. The first two chapters are rather short, but on average they're 5-6k.
Year 1/Pawns, Rooks, and Queens: Chapter 1-35
Year 2/Three Can Keep a Secret: Chapter 36-52
Year 3/The Night Guardian: Starts Chapter 53-
Year 1 alternates between the 40s and 90s plot lines, hence the length. On average, each 'year' is about 17 chapters.