Métamorphose -- HPfic, Tom Riddle, PG
My Second HP Genficathon entry is written! *cheers self*
This is, quite literally, my first attempt at writing Riddle fanfiction. I hope it wasn't too disastrous. I was kind of terrified to write it, initially. Riddle's interested me since HPB, but I didn't have the confidence to write him until I received s8219's prompt:
TMR after killing Hephzibah and taking the goblet.
This is what resulted. If you read this at all, Tay, thanks for the eleventh-hour beta.
He would disappear.
It was not, however, because he expected to encounter any trouble with the Ministry related to tonight’s events. His cover story was well-prepared, of course - it had been pathetically easy to place the powdered nettlevine next to the sugar bowl. He didn’t think its presence would cause a stir; the old woman had talked to him for what seemed like hours on end about her collection of rare poisons. In all likelihood, the house-elf’s mind hadn’t needed the small nudge he gave it to ensure that its hand would go astray. Still, it had been a chance to sharpen his skills - overcoming the negligible resistance offered by that elf’s mind was pathetically easy, but the detail he’d placed into the fake memories he’d implanted into its head was quite admirable, if he said so himself. Besides, even if the Aurors grew suspicious, the woman had mentioned her nephew Jeremiah often to him, and Tom had no doubt that he would want to get his hands on his aunt’s Galleons as soon as possible; he’d halt any attempts at serious investigation into her death.
Really, it had almost been too easy. All the planning, all the work of the last two nights seemed so unnecessary now, especially the theft of a vial of Felix Felicis from Burke’s stores. Fortune, it seemed, favored him without any magical aids.
He sighed as he glanced at Hephzibah’s face - eyes glassy and vacant, mouth twisted into a slight grimace. A foolish woman - utterly foolish - but one who had nevertheless proved more helpful than he could have dreamed. For that, he’d tried to select a poison that would give her a relatively quick and easy death. Still, she’d made certain insinuations about his mother, and such actions could never go unpunished. Therefore, he’d chosen a poison that would kill within thirty seconds - but would cause sharp shooting pain as the venom within ate at the lining of the victim’s throat. Hardly severe, as poisons went; he wasn’t a sadist, after all. Pain for its own sake left him ultimately unfulfilled. It served no real purpose.
Tom Riddle - Lord Voldemort - believed in always having a purpose for what he did.
His hand crept to the small bag at his side; he almost felt like stroking its contents, but he managed to refrain from indulging in such childish behavior.
He was snapped out of his reverie by a small shuffling noise. He turned around, wand at the ready - he had hoped to avoid killing tonight.
Well, unnecessary killing, at any rate.
It was the house-elf. It looked as though it were trapped in a thick cloud of fog, and encountering Tom seemed to befuddle it even more - its forehead and nose were wrinkled like a discarded rag. Tom stopped himself from shuddering; really, though, the creature was almost grotesque.
Its confusion was likely due to the set of false memories now clamoring in its head, telling the thing that it had seen nothing of Tom Riddle that night, directly contradicting the evidence of its own eyes.
Tom felt an utterly irrational impulse to gouge out those filmy eyes, leaking with some unidentifiable brown fluid. He quashed this impulse and Disapparated - the Aurors might well show up soon, and the cup and locket were safely in his possession. There was no reason to linger.
He reappeared in his small flat on Knockturn Alley above Borgin and Burkes, and emptied the contents of the bag onto his rather threadbare blanket. The cup gleamed even in this dimly-lighted place; it seemed to almost sparkle with pride.
The locket, though, still looked slightly tarnished. He’d have to remedy that later.
He opened the top drawer of his bureau, moved aside a pair of mouldy socks, and tapped the bottom of the drawer lightly with his wand. The ring rose slowly through the wood - he willed it to rise faster - finally coming to rest in his waiting palm. He placed the ring next to the cup and the locket on his bed, pulled over a three-legged, cracked chair, and stared at the objects.
A voice in the back of his head urged him to work faster; old Caractatus was supposed to be gone for the week, but he was almost as paranoid as Tom himself, and might well Apparate back at any minute to make sure that Tom wasn’t stealing any valuable merchandise. Tom ignored the voice.
Wouldn’t now be an appropriate moment to savor? He had four of the objects he needed for his Horcruxes, and from Burke’s client list, he’d already selected ten wizards and witches who seemed likely candidates to hold artifacts from Hogwarts’ founders. He couldn’t visit them as Tom Riddle, of course; foolish as the Ministry was, even they couldn’t overlook a series of murders and thefts that seemed to occur only after each victim was visited by a young salesman from Borgin and Burkes’.
He had to abandon the shell of Tom Riddle now. There would be no other alternative, should he follow the plans he had laid out. Lord Voldemort was ready to emerge. Lord Voldemort, he knew, was the energy he could feel rushing around inside his skull as he lay down at night, caught in Lord Voldemort’s dreams.
Lord Voldemort was cold and regal and beautiful and pure.
He deserved to live. He did.
Tom Riddle had no right to sit and stare at baubles on a night when Lord Voldemort could be born at last.
The theft of the cup and locket had been easy. What of it? Perhaps it was Fate itself, eager to plunge into a new era. Looking at his surroundings, he tried to imbue them with appropriate majesty. Here, after all, was the bureau in which Lord Voldemort concealed one of his Horcruxes. Here was bed in which Lord Voldemort rested after his recovery of the heirlooms of his family. With each proclamation, he focused his attention inward, searching for the euphoric rush he usually managed to feel after the completion of a particularly important task.
He still couldn’t find it.
He was tempted to throw the goblet across the room. He had no right to feel like this on such a night, none at all.
Excitement be damned, he finally decided. He had a job to do.
He removed a box from beneath his bed, and disabled each hex upon it painstakingly. When that was done, he withdrew a weathered old stone, a vial of violently red fluid, and a pouch filled with shimmering white dust. He blocked out all thoughts of dramatic proclamations and births and mysterious forces of the universe, and began.
********
He felt as though his skin was being pierced with thousands of hot needles, and each needle was twisting and pulling at him, stretching and contorting his features.
He gritted his teeth. The first Horcrux creation had been far worse than this.
Slowly, too slowly, the needles withdrew and left him flat on his back in the bed, his breathing ragged and his forehead beaded with sweat.
Through sheer force of will, he pulled himself upright and glanced in the mirror above his bedside table.
He stared at his reflection for a long time, ran his fingers over his cheekbones, eyelids, lips. Hadn’t his nose been straighter before? The edges weren’t as distinct as they had been. And hadn’t his eyes been a clear blue? Now they looked almost tinged with red. Bloodshot.
Slowly, his lips, thinner and paler than they had been, drew back into a half-smile, half-grimace.
Here was the mirror where Lord Voldemort beheld his face for the first time.
And he saw that it was…
He picked up the goblet and shattered the glass. The fragments fell into a neat heap onto the desk and twinkled there, innocently.
He caressed the bridge of his nose almost absentmindedly. It felt flatter than it had before. Not precisely the proud nose he’d seen in portraits of Salazar Slytherin.
It felt almost - serpentine.
Thoughtfully, he ran his fingers over his lips once more.
Serpentine.
Cold. Regal. Beautiful. Pure.
Lord Voldemort smiled.
This is, quite literally, my first attempt at writing Riddle fanfiction. I hope it wasn't too disastrous. I was kind of terrified to write it, initially. Riddle's interested me since HPB, but I didn't have the confidence to write him until I received s8219's prompt:
TMR after killing Hephzibah and taking the goblet.
This is what resulted. If you read this at all, Tay, thanks for the eleventh-hour beta.
He would disappear.
It was not, however, because he expected to encounter any trouble with the Ministry related to tonight’s events. His cover story was well-prepared, of course - it had been pathetically easy to place the powdered nettlevine next to the sugar bowl. He didn’t think its presence would cause a stir; the old woman had talked to him for what seemed like hours on end about her collection of rare poisons. In all likelihood, the house-elf’s mind hadn’t needed the small nudge he gave it to ensure that its hand would go astray. Still, it had been a chance to sharpen his skills - overcoming the negligible resistance offered by that elf’s mind was pathetically easy, but the detail he’d placed into the fake memories he’d implanted into its head was quite admirable, if he said so himself. Besides, even if the Aurors grew suspicious, the woman had mentioned her nephew Jeremiah often to him, and Tom had no doubt that he would want to get his hands on his aunt’s Galleons as soon as possible; he’d halt any attempts at serious investigation into her death.
Really, it had almost been too easy. All the planning, all the work of the last two nights seemed so unnecessary now, especially the theft of a vial of Felix Felicis from Burke’s stores. Fortune, it seemed, favored him without any magical aids.
He sighed as he glanced at Hephzibah’s face - eyes glassy and vacant, mouth twisted into a slight grimace. A foolish woman - utterly foolish - but one who had nevertheless proved more helpful than he could have dreamed. For that, he’d tried to select a poison that would give her a relatively quick and easy death. Still, she’d made certain insinuations about his mother, and such actions could never go unpunished. Therefore, he’d chosen a poison that would kill within thirty seconds - but would cause sharp shooting pain as the venom within ate at the lining of the victim’s throat. Hardly severe, as poisons went; he wasn’t a sadist, after all. Pain for its own sake left him ultimately unfulfilled. It served no real purpose.
Tom Riddle - Lord Voldemort - believed in always having a purpose for what he did.
His hand crept to the small bag at his side; he almost felt like stroking its contents, but he managed to refrain from indulging in such childish behavior.
He was snapped out of his reverie by a small shuffling noise. He turned around, wand at the ready - he had hoped to avoid killing tonight.
Well, unnecessary killing, at any rate.
It was the house-elf. It looked as though it were trapped in a thick cloud of fog, and encountering Tom seemed to befuddle it even more - its forehead and nose were wrinkled like a discarded rag. Tom stopped himself from shuddering; really, though, the creature was almost grotesque.
Its confusion was likely due to the set of false memories now clamoring in its head, telling the thing that it had seen nothing of Tom Riddle that night, directly contradicting the evidence of its own eyes.
Tom felt an utterly irrational impulse to gouge out those filmy eyes, leaking with some unidentifiable brown fluid. He quashed this impulse and Disapparated - the Aurors might well show up soon, and the cup and locket were safely in his possession. There was no reason to linger.
He reappeared in his small flat on Knockturn Alley above Borgin and Burkes, and emptied the contents of the bag onto his rather threadbare blanket. The cup gleamed even in this dimly-lighted place; it seemed to almost sparkle with pride.
The locket, though, still looked slightly tarnished. He’d have to remedy that later.
He opened the top drawer of his bureau, moved aside a pair of mouldy socks, and tapped the bottom of the drawer lightly with his wand. The ring rose slowly through the wood - he willed it to rise faster - finally coming to rest in his waiting palm. He placed the ring next to the cup and the locket on his bed, pulled over a three-legged, cracked chair, and stared at the objects.
A voice in the back of his head urged him to work faster; old Caractatus was supposed to be gone for the week, but he was almost as paranoid as Tom himself, and might well Apparate back at any minute to make sure that Tom wasn’t stealing any valuable merchandise. Tom ignored the voice.
Wouldn’t now be an appropriate moment to savor? He had four of the objects he needed for his Horcruxes, and from Burke’s client list, he’d already selected ten wizards and witches who seemed likely candidates to hold artifacts from Hogwarts’ founders. He couldn’t visit them as Tom Riddle, of course; foolish as the Ministry was, even they couldn’t overlook a series of murders and thefts that seemed to occur only after each victim was visited by a young salesman from Borgin and Burkes’.
He had to abandon the shell of Tom Riddle now. There would be no other alternative, should he follow the plans he had laid out. Lord Voldemort was ready to emerge. Lord Voldemort, he knew, was the energy he could feel rushing around inside his skull as he lay down at night, caught in Lord Voldemort’s dreams.
Lord Voldemort was cold and regal and beautiful and pure.
He deserved to live. He did.
Tom Riddle had no right to sit and stare at baubles on a night when Lord Voldemort could be born at last.
The theft of the cup and locket had been easy. What of it? Perhaps it was Fate itself, eager to plunge into a new era. Looking at his surroundings, he tried to imbue them with appropriate majesty. Here, after all, was the bureau in which Lord Voldemort concealed one of his Horcruxes. Here was bed in which Lord Voldemort rested after his recovery of the heirlooms of his family. With each proclamation, he focused his attention inward, searching for the euphoric rush he usually managed to feel after the completion of a particularly important task.
He still couldn’t find it.
He was tempted to throw the goblet across the room. He had no right to feel like this on such a night, none at all.
Excitement be damned, he finally decided. He had a job to do.
He removed a box from beneath his bed, and disabled each hex upon it painstakingly. When that was done, he withdrew a weathered old stone, a vial of violently red fluid, and a pouch filled with shimmering white dust. He blocked out all thoughts of dramatic proclamations and births and mysterious forces of the universe, and began.
********
He felt as though his skin was being pierced with thousands of hot needles, and each needle was twisting and pulling at him, stretching and contorting his features.
He gritted his teeth. The first Horcrux creation had been far worse than this.
Slowly, too slowly, the needles withdrew and left him flat on his back in the bed, his breathing ragged and his forehead beaded with sweat.
Through sheer force of will, he pulled himself upright and glanced in the mirror above his bedside table.
He stared at his reflection for a long time, ran his fingers over his cheekbones, eyelids, lips. Hadn’t his nose been straighter before? The edges weren’t as distinct as they had been. And hadn’t his eyes been a clear blue? Now they looked almost tinged with red. Bloodshot.
Slowly, his lips, thinner and paler than they had been, drew back into a half-smile, half-grimace.
Here was the mirror where Lord Voldemort beheld his face for the first time.
And he saw that it was…
He picked up the goblet and shattered the glass. The fragments fell into a neat heap onto the desk and twinkled there, innocently.
He caressed the bridge of his nose almost absentmindedly. It felt flatter than it had before. Not precisely the proud nose he’d seen in portraits of Salazar Slytherin.
It felt almost - serpentine.
Thoughtfully, he ran his fingers over his lips once more.
Serpentine.
Cold. Regal. Beautiful. Pure.
Lord Voldemort smiled.