Title: Dirty Blood

Rating: PG-13

Pairings: None

Genre: Angst

Summary: One-Shot: Tom M Riddle had one goal in life. To show everyone he was strong. To prove himself a wizard instead of the half-blooded dirt he was now. The way he chose to do it wasn't the best, but now, now wizards everywhere fear his name.

Authors Note: I was just reading an awesome book that focussed on the 'evil' characters point of view and this just came to me. I don't expect many of you to read this, since Tom M. Riddle, or Voldemort, isn't a favoured character among most. But, I like to think he wasn't always evil... And as disgusting as Voldemort is, Riddle's really just a boy, isn't he?

Well, hope you enjoy!

x.x.x.x

I stared at the picture, anger flaring inside me. My bones shuddered and I could almost feel them shatter with the immense hate I was feeling. He stared at me, mocking me, laughing at me. His eyes, bright green like my own, his hair... Black, like my own. They fell over his face, accenting his pale flesh, his handsome boyish face.

I looked in the mirror, feeling my anger multiply. I was exactly like him... At the age of fourteen, I was him. The same features, traits... The same blood.

Dirty blood.

The blood that flows in his veins flows through my own. It infects me, tortures me... Reminds me. I can do almost anything, or at least like to believe I can, but I can never banish the memory. The memory of him.

Identical. They called us identical... Mother used to say 'Like father, like son.' Back then, I never minded. Now? Now I hate it all... The words, the meanings...

All of it.

Then, it happened. The man left me. Left me alone with my wretched mother who cried endlessly. Why? I didn't know... I didn't think i'd ever find out. It would stay an unsolved mystery, locked with a lost key.

Loved. I thought he loved me. I thought I was loved... Those times, when the man who looked so much like me would laugh with me and play with me, making me feel carefree, I'd wish I were him. Now? Now I am him, and I hate it. Hate it with a passion.

Later, my mother died. Left me alone, just like my father had. I became an orphan. Life seemed to drag on, mierable was the only thing I felt. It was all because of him...

All of it.

Then. Then it was like somehow, somehow life steered it's way out of mud and landed on the path. The wonderful path that would solve all my troubles. The path that led away from him and helped me lead my own life, find my own identity. A life that would make me great, grant me freedom... Show me love and conquor my weakness.

I had been accepted into the greatest school. Actually, before that day I hadn't known what I had been. What my mother had been. I had been oblivious to the fact that somewhere, forcing it's way through the blood in my veins was a new blood. A pure blood...

Something that was all me and not him at all.

It was wizard blood. Somehow, the world granted me my wish.

I had become different from him. No longer were we identical.

Magic. I always thought it was great... Thought it was something non-existant but something everyone wanted. Magic was every child's hopes and dreams. It was the very soul of the word. Of my world.

But magic, I found out, destroyed my world, not centered it. My mother, the one who gave me my power, my blood, hadn't informed her husband of what she was. Didn't tell him that she could do the most insane things, like bring an object flying towards her with the power of a word or soar high on a broom. He was oblivious.

Until that day. He left, left because of what she was. What I was. And somehow, magic didn't seem as wonderful as I had once thought. In fact, It was horrible. It was dark and sneaky, showing you one side when doing evil things with the other. It wasn't something great that could guide children and show them extraordinary things. It was a dark and meant only for the darkest of things.

I started to use it to my advantage... There were many things one could do with the powerful tool of a wand in their hand. In fact, it's surprising that none had attempted to do what I would one day achieve. I could control anything and anyone with a swish and flick of my wrist. I could make the tallest structures fall with a push of my finger.

I could kill a human without leaking a single drop of blood.

My first target was a student in my year; Liam Hopkins. He was one of those Gryffindors- the type that felt magic was only meant to be used for great things like achieving wonderous goals, becoming your best... Showing your courage.

Liam was the equivalent of innocence. He was an average fourteen year old with bright blonde hair and joyous, pale blue eyes. His laughing face was one that I wanted to destroy for as long as I could remember. His blood? It was like mine, the pureness tainted with dirt. His father the muggle, his mother a witch that worked with the Ministry. It was why I hated him- His father accepted his mother. His father was still with him.

What I did to Liam, only I know. I never could have killed him, and at that age I wasn't sure I could. Unbelievable as it sounds, I too was innocent. My path was one with like any others, however my choices led me astray.

I can still remember how his frightened face looked as he was put under Dark magic, the way his eyes blanked and his pupils shrunk into two, fearful dots in the middle of large, spectacular sapphire rings. The way his fingertips curled with the need to tear apart limbs. The need to kill anything in his reach. I almost did it too, almost made him kill his best friend...

But I knew I couldn't. I was too weak, so I strived to become stronger.

Day after day, I snuck into the restricted section of the library, reading as many books as I could. They all focussed on the Dark Arts and how to manipulate people, free people, strong pure-blooded wizards, into doing the most absurd and dangerous things. They soon became my tools... In fact, all of Slytherin became one big weapon- my weapon.

My life could have been different... I could have been sorted into Gryffindor and could have been brave and courageous. I could have made my parents proud, becoming a simple medi-wizard or even something as plain as a ministry official. I could have been normal with no nagging voice telling me that muggles were dirt... Dirt and filthy and they deserved to die.

I could have. But I was deprived of that option the minute my father left me. Left me with only one thing... Hate.

Hate for people like him. Hate for people who cannot accept what I am. What wizards are meant to be.

Hate for muggles like him.

And so, my only goal in life was to show him I was stronger. That he didn't break me, didn't affect me. That I was a wizard and would always be more powerful, more honorable.

The only way to do that was to get rid of him. So, when I felt I became strong enough, I did the one thing I had been trying to do since the age of fourteen.

I killed someone.

And it was my own father.

Everyone else was easy.

x.x.x.x

A.N: I know, this isn't exactly how TMR was described in the book, but it's as close as I could get! I hope you guys liked it... If you didn't, that's fine. It was only an experiment, after all.