are you ready to experiment, are you ready to be burned?
While I was writing this, I had that bit of "Chemistry Class" stuck in my head where Elvis Costello croons "Are you ready for the final solution?"
Emotional facism, indeed.
"The King is Dead, Long Live the King"
Tom Riddle/Albus Dumbledore
A coming-of-age story, of sorts.
R
It is still debated whether the basic matter of an object is changed when it is Transfigured; that is, does Transfiguration alter merely the appearance of something, or does it also change its essence?
- Sylvia Stortham, "A Philosophical Examination of Transfiguration", The Durmstrang Review
Stepping into the building where walls never stood still and the next step was always pulling just ahead of you, Tom Riddle breathed in deep, tasting the dust in the air and wondering if magic could enter him through his lungs.
The minutes that fell between his entrance and his Sorting were full of wonder and joy and he'd keep the memory of them close to his chest for years to come, reliving them from time to time and embellishing as he did so - a cobblestone here, a portrait there. As an adult, he would remember it as the only point in his life when he was not afraid.
And then, he'd say half-jokingly to select confidantes, waving his cigar in the air, and then I became a man.
He was a Slytherin, and that meant he was cunning, ambitious, and sly; it also meant that his heritage was a secret so heavy it hurt his lungs and kept him awake at night. It was the thing around which he shaped his life - his actions, his words, his friendships; all molded around the secret as if he could somehow, if he just worked hard enough, obscure it from view.
This was his story: his parents were dead from a wizarding form of apoplexy that was popularly thought to be caused by very fierce, very pure blood. They were from Holland, so of course no one in Hogwarts would have heard of them; they died when he was an infant, and he was taken in by distant English relatives. This was why he did not know the language. With his coloring and height, it was no stretch of the imagination to believe his claim of nationality, and so the rest naturally followed.
It was a solid story, his most prized possession. It begged no questions he couldn't answer. It kept his secret safe, but he always walked quickly as if the ghost of his father was following him, who would surely cry out fraud, fraud the instant he turned around.
"Do not mourn your parents," Horst Mantek would tell him. Horst was a German expatriate whose parents had moved to England for the sake of work, and he would loudly misinterpret Tom's moments of intense shame and anger, as if emotions were somehow lost in translation.
"They are gone, true, but they have given you the greatest gift a parent can give. Pride in your birth should keep you strong." He spoke frequently of strength and pride and Rassenreinheit - purity of the race - with the assurance of those who have been born into their opinions. Tom would laugh with him at the ignorant dirty Mudbloods, and he'd watch Horst stretch the muscles of his broad back, full of confidence and grace, an ease that he desperately envied.
"Rassenreinheit," Tom would repeat, the syllables rasping in his throat, and press his fingers hard into his wrist, lifting them and watching the blood swim up to the skin.
Their third year, Horst would come back from winter break wearing the brown shirt of the Hitler-Jugend under his robes, and the gleam in his eyes would push aside his classmates, including Tom. "It's not that I dislike you," he'd say, fingering the swastika pinned to his collar. "But you are English, and so..." His thick hands would wave expansively, as if the answer was not within him but was floating through the air.
King Ivo: Sir Eldrid, thou truly art a great and terrible wizard.
Eldrid: I am but your humble servant, Sire.
King Ivo: I beg you not to interrupt. Thou art strong, but is that strength enough?
- Edgar Beckingdale, The Triumphs of Sir Eldrid, act IV, scene 2
Tom's first-ever class at Hogwarts was Transfigurations. It seemed an omen: perhaps he would do well, and perhaps he could change.
But his first attempt at transforming the mouse into a teacup was unsuccessful, as was his second, and his third.
Professor Dumbledore stopped by his desk, reached out and gently stilled Tom's hand. "Calm yourself, Mr. Riddle. Magic has nothing to do with loudness or violence. The mind must be relaxed and focused. You will find that all this spell takes - indeed, all any spell takes - is a simple, controlled movement of the wrist and a carefully-made incantation. There, see? A simple matter."
Tom nodded, although he had not been paying any attention at all to the spell or the mouse or the cup, had instead been staring at the professor's long red hair and how it seemed to crackle with barely restrained power. When the professor walked on to another student, Tom turned his eyes away, blood rushing in his ears.
On his desk sat a small, perfectly formed teacup made of translucent bone china. He held his breath as he gingerly picked it up, afraid it would break.
When the other boys would get drunk on contraband firewhiskey and sneak through the hallways, scrawling anti-Mudblood grafitti outside the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff dormitories, slashing paintings and setting traps, Tom would stay in the common room and study. He'd read his textbooks over and over til he memorized them, til all he had to do was touch their covers and he'd know what they said.
Like a Ravenclaw, his friends would say, half in mockery and half in awe.
Though he joined in when the others ridiculed and complained about Professor Dumbledore, a notorious Gryffindor and suspected Muggle-lover, he paid a particular attention to his Transfiguration homework, covering more inches than was needed with tiny cramped words.
He will say that I am the best student in the year, the brightest student he has ever seen, Tom thought frequently. "Such intelligence and power, and at such a young age."
But he never did, and though Tom kept turning in his homework with his handwriting small and tight, full of defiance, he stopped waiting for recognition. Only at night would he allow himself to think about it, fantasize about it, with a curious warming in his belly that he would only understand when he was fourteen and coming in the rough palm of a sixth-year boy.
The darkness of the first stage is a false darkness, for it contains the light of [...] easily ensnares the soul and forbids it to [...]. It is in the second stage that the shadows are replaced by [...] forms of pure black. The eye begins to see the next world.
- The lost testament of St. Maximillian Kolbe, Codex VII, Descension (fragment)
"A parting gift," said Edward Doyle, his eyes wild and his breath thick with alcohol. "Something to remember us by."
Everyone nodded enthusiastically. They were lined up in the hallway outside the Slytherin common room door, not bothering to disguise themselves or to keep quiet. Some still wore the swastika pins that had become popular when Horst Mantek died gloriously in the German army after having killed, by some accounts, at least 50 Muggles. Others wore silver armbands with the alchemical symbol for purity embroidered in black. Tom wore both.
"Now," said Edward, swaying a little on his feet. "You know what to do."
And they did.
The passwords they had spied for over the past week lingered on their tongues, as if that was the crux of their attack, their victory: the safe becoming unsafe, the sanctuaries burning. They pulled Mudbloods out of their beds - and if Purebloods were also taken, it was no great loss, no loss at all, the death of blood-traitors.
They ran shouting through the hallways, chasing the Mudbloods, the animals, casting everything they could think to cast. More than a few managed Crucio, their hatred and malice bursting perfectly formed from their wands.
Tom walked through the hallways calmly, slowly, as if savoring the fear and chaos in the air, though the magic ran so hard in his veins that the blood vessels in his eyes broke. His snake (a green-and-black striped serpent four feet in length, with a wide jaw full of fangs) followed him eagerly, like a pet - though Tom was well aware that there was no faithfulness in the creature.
He cornered a little Hufflepuff Mudblood girl, who kept trying to back up even though she was already trapped against the wall, whose mousy brown hair was damp with flop sweat, plastered against her forehead.
Cleanse her, Tom said to his snake. Purge her. The snake darted forward and sunk its fangs into the girl's throat, not drinking but spilling, spilling the blood down her nightshirt where it mingled with her snot and tears. She cried out, her screams becoming weaker and weaker, but Tom just stood there and smiled widely, tapping the tip of his wand against his teeth.
When she slumped to the floor, silent, he strolled away with the snake close on his heels.
The Ravenclaws smiled thinly and complimented the Slytherins on their initiative, though it was rumoured that a Ravenclaw had authored the plan. The Hufflepuffs shook their heads and said, oh, if there's anything we can do, but shied away from connecting themselves to the Gryffindors, who hurled hexes and spit at every Slytherin they saw, every Slytherin who still remained in school.
They never touched Tom, though, Tom with his bloodshot eyes, who laughed and kept a step ahead without ever running, his snake lying curled around his neck. Tom who reached into the minds of his interrogators when he said softly, I wasn't a part of it, sir, I'm not that kind of person, and they all nodded and smiled sadly, because of course the boy wasn't that kind of person - a decent boy, they all agreed, with unfortunate associations, though afterwards they'd be hard-pressed to remember exactly what it was they had said.
Years later, when Tom had become Voldemort and Death Eaters stood without challenge on every street, those Gryffindors - now Ministry workers and nurses and bookkeepers - would talk to each other in hushed tones of the time when Tom Riddle had led a serpent through the halls of Hogwarts.
For some, the memory would quickly lose shape, settling as a cold dread in their chests, a dread that would rise again from time to time, though they had long since forgotten what it meant.
I eagerly await death and all its mysteries. I feel great pity for ghosts and vampires, those poor creatures who will never reach the final unknown.
- Georg Blau, in a letter to Leo Hesping, Collected Correspondances, 1884-1947
During the years following the war, Tom Riddle would surround himself with carefully-picked wizards, dark wizards with a great capacity for cruelty and an even greater capacity for loyalty. That blind, stupid loyalty would bind them to him, would keep them from asking for more than he gave, would keep them from questioning him, his past. But without him, they would collapse in on each other; the plan would fail, and the world would suffer, choked by its own filth.
So, then, they must not be without him. In his books, he found the answer: to live eternally, first he must die. A simple matter, really.
On a Thursday in June, Tom Riddle lay down in his bed and exhaled his last breath. The next morning, a creature with colorless skin and blood-red eyes rose from the bed and embraced those of his followers who had kept vigil.
When they spoke of miracles, he shook his head. "It is just a trick, nothing more," said the Dark Lord, in a strange high-pitched voice.
His followers bowed their heads, for in that voice they heard the sound of stone buildings crumbling, of fields lit by flames, of a child crying. They bowed, for in that instant they knew: they would succeed, and this man, this more-than-man, this being would lead them.
He beckoned them closer, his fingers thin and white like bones. "This is our future. This is our present. This, my disciples, is what we own." And he showed them.
"The deaths of men arouse no sympathy in me," the Dark Lord said when his old Transfigurations professor tried to convince him of his sin.
He lifted Dumbledore's chin with his wand, tracing the wrinkles there with an amused look. "Why do you not attack me? I am not so hard to kill. All it takes is a simple movement of the wrist, a careful incantation. A simple matter. A child, Albus, a child could do it."
And a child will, he thought he heard Dumbledore say, but it slid from his mind as he moved his wand from Dumbledore's neck to lower, lower.
Review or else I'll come through the telephone lines and break your fucking computer screen so I can punch you in the face plz kthxbai <3333.
Emotional facism, indeed.
"The King is Dead, Long Live the King"
Tom Riddle/Albus Dumbledore
A coming-of-age story, of sorts.
R
It is still debated whether the basic matter of an object is changed when it is Transfigured; that is, does Transfiguration alter merely the appearance of something, or does it also change its essence?
- Sylvia Stortham, "A Philosophical Examination of Transfiguration", The Durmstrang Review
Stepping into the building where walls never stood still and the next step was always pulling just ahead of you, Tom Riddle breathed in deep, tasting the dust in the air and wondering if magic could enter him through his lungs.
The minutes that fell between his entrance and his Sorting were full of wonder and joy and he'd keep the memory of them close to his chest for years to come, reliving them from time to time and embellishing as he did so - a cobblestone here, a portrait there. As an adult, he would remember it as the only point in his life when he was not afraid.
And then, he'd say half-jokingly to select confidantes, waving his cigar in the air, and then I became a man.
He was a Slytherin, and that meant he was cunning, ambitious, and sly; it also meant that his heritage was a secret so heavy it hurt his lungs and kept him awake at night. It was the thing around which he shaped his life - his actions, his words, his friendships; all molded around the secret as if he could somehow, if he just worked hard enough, obscure it from view.
This was his story: his parents were dead from a wizarding form of apoplexy that was popularly thought to be caused by very fierce, very pure blood. They were from Holland, so of course no one in Hogwarts would have heard of them; they died when he was an infant, and he was taken in by distant English relatives. This was why he did not know the language. With his coloring and height, it was no stretch of the imagination to believe his claim of nationality, and so the rest naturally followed.
It was a solid story, his most prized possession. It begged no questions he couldn't answer. It kept his secret safe, but he always walked quickly as if the ghost of his father was following him, who would surely cry out fraud, fraud the instant he turned around.
"Do not mourn your parents," Horst Mantek would tell him. Horst was a German expatriate whose parents had moved to England for the sake of work, and he would loudly misinterpret Tom's moments of intense shame and anger, as if emotions were somehow lost in translation.
"They are gone, true, but they have given you the greatest gift a parent can give. Pride in your birth should keep you strong." He spoke frequently of strength and pride and Rassenreinheit - purity of the race - with the assurance of those who have been born into their opinions. Tom would laugh with him at the ignorant dirty Mudbloods, and he'd watch Horst stretch the muscles of his broad back, full of confidence and grace, an ease that he desperately envied.
"Rassenreinheit," Tom would repeat, the syllables rasping in his throat, and press his fingers hard into his wrist, lifting them and watching the blood swim up to the skin.
Their third year, Horst would come back from winter break wearing the brown shirt of the Hitler-Jugend under his robes, and the gleam in his eyes would push aside his classmates, including Tom. "It's not that I dislike you," he'd say, fingering the swastika pinned to his collar. "But you are English, and so..." His thick hands would wave expansively, as if the answer was not within him but was floating through the air.
King Ivo: Sir Eldrid, thou truly art a great and terrible wizard.
Eldrid: I am but your humble servant, Sire.
King Ivo: I beg you not to interrupt. Thou art strong, but is that strength enough?
- Edgar Beckingdale, The Triumphs of Sir Eldrid, act IV, scene 2
Tom's first-ever class at Hogwarts was Transfigurations. It seemed an omen: perhaps he would do well, and perhaps he could change.
But his first attempt at transforming the mouse into a teacup was unsuccessful, as was his second, and his third.
Professor Dumbledore stopped by his desk, reached out and gently stilled Tom's hand. "Calm yourself, Mr. Riddle. Magic has nothing to do with loudness or violence. The mind must be relaxed and focused. You will find that all this spell takes - indeed, all any spell takes - is a simple, controlled movement of the wrist and a carefully-made incantation. There, see? A simple matter."
Tom nodded, although he had not been paying any attention at all to the spell or the mouse or the cup, had instead been staring at the professor's long red hair and how it seemed to crackle with barely restrained power. When the professor walked on to another student, Tom turned his eyes away, blood rushing in his ears.
On his desk sat a small, perfectly formed teacup made of translucent bone china. He held his breath as he gingerly picked it up, afraid it would break.
When the other boys would get drunk on contraband firewhiskey and sneak through the hallways, scrawling anti-Mudblood grafitti outside the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff dormitories, slashing paintings and setting traps, Tom would stay in the common room and study. He'd read his textbooks over and over til he memorized them, til all he had to do was touch their covers and he'd know what they said.
Like a Ravenclaw, his friends would say, half in mockery and half in awe.
Though he joined in when the others ridiculed and complained about Professor Dumbledore, a notorious Gryffindor and suspected Muggle-lover, he paid a particular attention to his Transfiguration homework, covering more inches than was needed with tiny cramped words.
He will say that I am the best student in the year, the brightest student he has ever seen, Tom thought frequently. "Such intelligence and power, and at such a young age."
But he never did, and though Tom kept turning in his homework with his handwriting small and tight, full of defiance, he stopped waiting for recognition. Only at night would he allow himself to think about it, fantasize about it, with a curious warming in his belly that he would only understand when he was fourteen and coming in the rough palm of a sixth-year boy.
The darkness of the first stage is a false darkness, for it contains the light of [...] easily ensnares the soul and forbids it to [...]. It is in the second stage that the shadows are replaced by [...] forms of pure black. The eye begins to see the next world.
- The lost testament of St. Maximillian Kolbe, Codex VII, Descension (fragment)
"A parting gift," said Edward Doyle, his eyes wild and his breath thick with alcohol. "Something to remember us by."
Everyone nodded enthusiastically. They were lined up in the hallway outside the Slytherin common room door, not bothering to disguise themselves or to keep quiet. Some still wore the swastika pins that had become popular when Horst Mantek died gloriously in the German army after having killed, by some accounts, at least 50 Muggles. Others wore silver armbands with the alchemical symbol for purity embroidered in black. Tom wore both.
"Now," said Edward, swaying a little on his feet. "You know what to do."
And they did.
The passwords they had spied for over the past week lingered on their tongues, as if that was the crux of their attack, their victory: the safe becoming unsafe, the sanctuaries burning. They pulled Mudbloods out of their beds - and if Purebloods were also taken, it was no great loss, no loss at all, the death of blood-traitors.
They ran shouting through the hallways, chasing the Mudbloods, the animals, casting everything they could think to cast. More than a few managed Crucio, their hatred and malice bursting perfectly formed from their wands.
Tom walked through the hallways calmly, slowly, as if savoring the fear and chaos in the air, though the magic ran so hard in his veins that the blood vessels in his eyes broke. His snake (a green-and-black striped serpent four feet in length, with a wide jaw full of fangs) followed him eagerly, like a pet - though Tom was well aware that there was no faithfulness in the creature.
He cornered a little Hufflepuff Mudblood girl, who kept trying to back up even though she was already trapped against the wall, whose mousy brown hair was damp with flop sweat, plastered against her forehead.
Cleanse her, Tom said to his snake. Purge her. The snake darted forward and sunk its fangs into the girl's throat, not drinking but spilling, spilling the blood down her nightshirt where it mingled with her snot and tears. She cried out, her screams becoming weaker and weaker, but Tom just stood there and smiled widely, tapping the tip of his wand against his teeth.
When she slumped to the floor, silent, he strolled away with the snake close on his heels.
The Ravenclaws smiled thinly and complimented the Slytherins on their initiative, though it was rumoured that a Ravenclaw had authored the plan. The Hufflepuffs shook their heads and said, oh, if there's anything we can do, but shied away from connecting themselves to the Gryffindors, who hurled hexes and spit at every Slytherin they saw, every Slytherin who still remained in school.
They never touched Tom, though, Tom with his bloodshot eyes, who laughed and kept a step ahead without ever running, his snake lying curled around his neck. Tom who reached into the minds of his interrogators when he said softly, I wasn't a part of it, sir, I'm not that kind of person, and they all nodded and smiled sadly, because of course the boy wasn't that kind of person - a decent boy, they all agreed, with unfortunate associations, though afterwards they'd be hard-pressed to remember exactly what it was they had said.
Years later, when Tom had become Voldemort and Death Eaters stood without challenge on every street, those Gryffindors - now Ministry workers and nurses and bookkeepers - would talk to each other in hushed tones of the time when Tom Riddle had led a serpent through the halls of Hogwarts.
For some, the memory would quickly lose shape, settling as a cold dread in their chests, a dread that would rise again from time to time, though they had long since forgotten what it meant.
I eagerly await death and all its mysteries. I feel great pity for ghosts and vampires, those poor creatures who will never reach the final unknown.
- Georg Blau, in a letter to Leo Hesping, Collected Correspondances, 1884-1947
During the years following the war, Tom Riddle would surround himself with carefully-picked wizards, dark wizards with a great capacity for cruelty and an even greater capacity for loyalty. That blind, stupid loyalty would bind them to him, would keep them from asking for more than he gave, would keep them from questioning him, his past. But without him, they would collapse in on each other; the plan would fail, and the world would suffer, choked by its own filth.
So, then, they must not be without him. In his books, he found the answer: to live eternally, first he must die. A simple matter, really.
On a Thursday in June, Tom Riddle lay down in his bed and exhaled his last breath. The next morning, a creature with colorless skin and blood-red eyes rose from the bed and embraced those of his followers who had kept vigil.
When they spoke of miracles, he shook his head. "It is just a trick, nothing more," said the Dark Lord, in a strange high-pitched voice.
His followers bowed their heads, for in that voice they heard the sound of stone buildings crumbling, of fields lit by flames, of a child crying. They bowed, for in that instant they knew: they would succeed, and this man, this more-than-man, this being would lead them.
He beckoned them closer, his fingers thin and white like bones. "This is our future. This is our present. This, my disciples, is what we own." And he showed them.
"The deaths of men arouse no sympathy in me," the Dark Lord said when his old Transfigurations professor tried to convince him of his sin.
He lifted Dumbledore's chin with his wand, tracing the wrinkles there with an amused look. "Why do you not attack me? I am not so hard to kill. All it takes is a simple movement of the wrist, a careful incantation. A simple matter. A child, Albus, a child could do it."
And a child will, he thought he heard Dumbledore say, but it slid from his mind as he moved his wand from Dumbledore's neck to lower, lower.
Review or else I'll come through the telephone lines and break your fucking computer screen so I can punch you in the face plz kthxbai <3333.