"I must admit—I never expected this from you, Potter." He stares at me, or maybe he stares down the barrel of the gun aimed at his head. His eyes, as they stare, sink deeper and deeper into his white face like holes with no bottom.
"You calculate too much, Riddle. You should learn to expect the unexpected." I try to stop my hand from shaking. But it does no good. He sees.
And he smiles. "And what is that? Are you going to kill me?"
"Yes." My hand shakes.
He scoots forward an inch in his chair. "What reason would you have for killing me?"
He's good. He's like a little worm, crawling his way into your ear and into your brain, leaving whispers of doubt behind.
"Love." My hand shakes.
Riddle scoffs. "Love." He sneered. "Love is such a fabricated notion. One moment, the boy is saying 'I love her,' and the next he's talking about loving a different person altogether. One day, a woman is going on about how the love a mother has for her child is like no other, and the next she's leaving her baby on the footsteps of an orphanage. Love is nothing but a convenient excuse, and feeling is nothing but a lie."
He snarls the last part, and my hand shakes. I bring the other one up to steady it.
"I promised I would kill you." It comes out as a whisper.
Riddle laughs. "Promises are good. Promises are real. How about this, Potter? I'll make you a promise, too. If you don't kill me, then I will kill you."
My finger tightens on the trigger.
"But you'll want to hear about how I killed your parents, first. Won't you?"
I nearly drop the gun. "What?"
Riddle just looks amused.
"My parents died—" I begin.
"In a car crash, I know." Riddle grins. His teeth are white and straight and seem to glow in the darkness. "Did anyone ever tell you it was an accident?"
I think that I should shake my head, but everything is frozen. My hands are gripping the gun so tightly I feel as if they should be cramping, if I could feel anything at all. My forehead seems to be splitting open again, the scar searing itself back into my skin—like a reminder. Riddle gave me this scar. Riddle gave me all of my scars.
Riddle examines his nails. "Your father decided that love was his excuse, too. This was before you were born, naturally, and after he met your mother. He backed quietly out of the business, and I let him go—what was one little James Potter out of hundreds of little James Potters? This may surprise you, but I did not hold a grudge against him for leaving, as long as he stayed quiet. I respected your father—liked him, even. It was only what he did a few years after you were born that pitted us against each other for the first time."
"What did he do?" The words are out before I can stop them.
"Your father let family life tamper with his priorities." Riddle sighs dramatically. "He had made new friends, one of whom was a police officer. I imagine you know him. Sirius Black, your godfather."
"Godfather?"
"Evidently not." Riddle looks bored for a moment. "Well, he's dead, too, so that's understandable. Anyway, the unseen hands of fate were pushing your father and me back together, it seemed, because I felt the necessity to run a little… operation in the city in which he resided. Sirius Black caught on to me, and your father felt that he had liberty to give him information. It was obvious by then that he had to go."
"How—how did you arrange… it?" The gun rattles in my hands.
Riddle smirks at it. "It was easy." His voice drops into a deadly cadence. "Little Potter, you have no idea how far my connections reach."
"You… you think I won't kill you."
"Of course not. I've been in far more life-threatening situations in the past, and I'm still sitting before you today. Am I not?"
I push my glasses up. They're slipping from the sweat on my face. "You killed my parents, Riddle. And… and you killed a—a person—who I loved."
"You're running out of time, Potter."
"I'm not letting you live."
"I'm still alive."
I'm numb. The world is spinning too fast around me. The gun is slick in my hands. The trigger seems stuck. My fingers are sticking to everything.
"I made a promise," I tell Riddle.
"I made a promise, too." He's still confident.
My heart—my heart—it seems to be jumping out of my chest.
"I made a promise," I tell him again, with stronger conviction.
"Which you will regret." He's over confident.
"Riddle, I loved him," I tell him, and I think I'm about to shoot him or burst into uncontrollable tears.
"Love is the greatest falsehood," he says with a smirk.
"Love is real," I say. And I pull the trigger.
He falls back, the smirk still on his face, and slumps in the chair. A trail of blood runs out from the hole in the center of his forehead and halfway down his face. He seems even whiter immediately, in death.
I look away, and the gun clatters to the floor.
I did this is for you.
Were you watching?
