Keeping Secrets

The Eighth Chapter

My sixth year was my best year yet. The story will be an instant ledgend, of the Chamber of Secrets being opened and the beast killing a mudblood girl. It was a shame that my careful planning and genius had to be acredited to the young oaf Rubes Hagrid. I had returned to the Orphanage full of trepitation - what state would my Victoria be in and would she have understood what I'd done. I never intened to tell her of the chamber, or the murder of the innocent girl. It was nesecary - enjoyable in the execution even but she was too weak to understand why the girl had to die. But she had called my creation of the Horcrux evil - not a term to be used lightly.

"Tom." She said, sadness colouring her tone, which was not how she normally would greet me.

"Victoria." I greeted her, going to her side, she allowed me to sit.

"Do you regret it?" She asked me, and I hesitated. Certainly this past year I'd worried about the diary, my hair had even begun thinning though the difference wasn't notecable to the observer. "Tom this is a part of you." She pushed the book back into my hands. "You're broken." Was all she said. I shook my head, becasue she was wrong.

I didn't want to argue with her, and I left her, perhaps the first summer I spent secluded in my room reading my own diary, showing me the notes she had written in there, talking to this fragment of my soul.

I don't know how many notes she left and how far throguh them I was when the words of my soul sounded wrong how it spoke to Victoria, like it was intent on using her, disgusted at her lack of magic.

I decided she was right - it was evil, what I had done to myself. I left the book in my room and visited her again, summer trickling away as well as the time I could spend with her. She looked surprised to see me.

"I think you were right." I said. She looked even more surprised. "I... that thing is not me." I muttered.

"It is," She insisted, thought I didn't like it. "Its a part of you, a ugly part, a part that I don't love. But still a part of you. I will keep it with me if you want, becasue it is a part of you and I do love you Tom." She said evenly.

"I regret it, making it." I told her. She nodded.

"Why did you?" She asks me, and I do feel guilty now.

"If apart of my soul is always earthbound I cannot die." I tell her and her face crumples.

"I can assure you a half life is hardly worth the life, Tom." She says and this confuses me. She seemes to sense my confusion. "Look at me," She tells me, and with difficulty pushes her comforter back. She's so thin, delapitated even, weak, always so weak. "Imagine when you come back after you die you would be a creature like me. Sick, twisted even, a shadow of a person."

I didn't understand her mood, she'd never reffered to herself as such before and I didn't know what had brought on these words and actions from her.

"Tom, Miss Murdock says I will die, soon." She tells me next. I shake my head and go to her.

"Don't say things like that," I urge her, "Its not true."

"Ten years or so." She mutteres, "Likely less, two maybe, ten would be the best I could hope for. But even if I had the option, Tom I would not do what you've done to save myself."

Her words stung and I glared at her. "You have no right to judge me." I said, "You don't know me." I tell her. She raised her eyebrow, a quizzical look.

"Don't I?" She asked.

"If you're already giving up why haven't you killed yourself?" I ask her, maybe too harshly, she sighs.

"I've thought about it." She admits, which also surprised me. I told her she doesn't know me, and maybe its true, but I'm learning she still has secrets from me. "But my life is still a gift - I plan to treasure what little I have." Her words touched me, though I had no reply. "That and I wouldn't want to miss my time with you." I was thrown, she'd said she loved me - I'd replied the same, but I didn't know that I was that important to her.

My days with her continued on like this, she grew weaker and would tire easily and I found myself going to sit with her while she was asleep. It was during one of these days - she was sleeping fitfully, her breathing laboured and brows knitted together in her sleep that I came across a conversation between the fragment of my soul and her that would stay with me forever.

He doesn't know what is being said here, you two are seperate entities entierly now?

Yes.

You're not like him.

Sounds like an accusation. You've said I'm apart of him. I wouldn't expect a muggle to understand the complexities of this magic, this is the darkest kind of magic.

I can tell. All in an attempt to fly from death, then?

We are immortal together.

I admire your togetherness, Volant.

Volant?

Volant Mortem. I've named you, becasue you are not Tom.

Here I had smiled sadly at Victoria's logic.

Latin, all the purebloods learn from birth. Literal translation of course. The words remind me of Tom Marvolo Riddle, the letters simmilar.

I could fashion myself a name from that. Its enough.

Below this was what I might only describe as a picture, TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE was written in my own hand, letters crossed out, I recognised pen strokes from Victoria as well, she had helped Volant.

At the bottom of the page, aslo in my hand was written;

I AM LORD VOLDEMORT

Quite against my direction the words on the page dissapeared, to be replaced by somehting else.

She is a weakness, Tom.

Volant was speaking with me.

She is your greatest weakness, you know this, and she will die, she's just a muggle.

I snapped the book shut then, but the words - my own worried thoughts after all haunted me.

Victoria became weaker, and the nurse told me she was in a lot of pain, though she was also doing well, by this stage in her illness. That her outlsating two years seemed very likely. She seemed less than pleased at the news.

"I'm just tired," Had been her first argument, but her second was what drove my descicion, words I would hear again and again in my life but never truly understand.

"There are worse things than death."

I wondered how she dared say that to me, I knew she was smarter than to not fear her own death, above all else.

She was weaker than I expected.

The actual process that made my descision is long and complicated, and you must understand it was the right choice to make - she deserved it. Firstly the differentiation between my horcrux and I angered me, for we were two parts of one whole, I must say I grew to love the Horcrux she dubbed Volant. The name, Lord Voldemort, was made for me, I am Lord Voldemort, destined to be a feared Lord of all, and Victoria Smith, or Aquilla Black whoever she was was a weakness, and only my killing her would make me stronger.

She seemed to know what I was there to do. Pleaded with me not to - another show of her weakness, she couldn't defend herself so I was within my right.

"You promised to protect me." She told me, "Tom please?"

I was unsympathetic to her pleas. She watched my wand with wide eyes. I made to talk to her, to tell her I loved her, to thank her for my new name and purpose, but I couldn't bring myself to say anything. Only the words of the killing curse and in a flash of green she was dead. I had in my pocket the pretty stone she'd gifted me, inteneding to ancor more of my soul to the world, I felt the fabric of myself tear, I felt this profound feeling in my chest, my very heart it seemed to tear, I made to say the incantation, but the words got stuck in my throat. For a fleeting moment I felt I couldn't sully her death with this act of evil, what she deemed evil. I missed my chance, that hesitation, and apart of me died with Victoria Smith that day.

I sat with her for a long time after that, her dark eyes unseeing until I closed them and she could be sleeping. Then I left, and in the middle of the night I was woken by the tearful nurse.

"Victoria passed in her sleep, Tom she's dead."

I knew this, I'd done the deed but my heart still clenched with sorrow and fear and heartbreak, hurt. The feeling, the feeling of death I thought, was enough to reinforce my rightousness about the Horcruxes I would make.