fic.
Animal
PG, Tom Riddle, Gen
An alternate look a the boy who would become Voldemort.
Over the centuries, over the millions of years of evolution, the human species has a supremacy over all living things, or so we think. Bloodthristy and with a need for expansion, growth and domination, our wits sharpen like the knives we use to cut hide, but our animalistic instincts grow duller as our brain capacity overtakes any need for a hyper-sensitive olfactory system. We have binoculars and telescopes, we no longer need our eyes. And even if our sense of hearing was sharp, we wouldn't be able to tell over factory slams and machinery whirring. But take consideration for a man and a beast in combat; instinct will conquer shrewdness. A man without his magnifying glasses and guns is no more mighty than a blind mole, bumbling about in a world of dull sensory while the predators catch and feast.
Or at least that's how Tom understood it and that's how he approached what he called his sixth sense. Although it wasn't exactly a sixth sense as it controlled all the five but added things, like the ability to command with his mind and strange languages. For years after discovering the difference between man and animal, he considered himself an animal. Human in appearance, but sharper in ways that his mere mortal companions weren't. It didn't take him long after to realize that no, he wasn't not human, he was superhuman. In the quiet understanding only children can have, he knew in the back of his mind, he was different; but Tom wasn't any child and he knew it was a good difference.
In time that quiet understanding was soon honed into a brilliant understanding of his own capabilities.
A garter snake in a park, he knew what it wanted. A child possessing something he had, he could have it. He could make someone hurt if he wanted and he often did and this did not confuse or upset him. Rather, his only bursts of happiness were post-wicked, secret laughter he would allow himself hiding behind his bed as he heard crying or shouts. And then he was the lion in the cave ripping apart its kill, something gained with advantage that the prey did not possess. And he would lean his head against the dirty boards of the walls and be lost in his ecstasy and then hours after, still smile at turned backs, never feeling sorry. For they were weaker and it was his job as the great devourer of the weak to exact his small bursts of power. Because that's what it all came down to, power, who had it and who did not. He did and he was dominant over them. It was only right.
Around age ten the fear started to cause suspicion; people wouldn't look him in the eyes, once a girl caught him talking to a small snake he kept in a cigar box he found in the rubbish bins outside, a snake from the park. She heard hissing and Tom's hissing reply. The snake was only grateful; he would be a meal for a bird and Tom, lost in his secret language did not notice the door opening and the unruly blond pigtails peering in curiously.
It only took a moment before he saw her and she didn't speak to him again. She didn't exactly speak to anyone after. Tom promised he never laid a finger on her, and that was true, but he did touch her ... not with hands, not with a five sense, but with the sixth, touched her in the mind and he himself wasn't exactly sure, but she was confused afterward, only wanted to talk of snakes. She came out of her spell months later and could not remember any of it but still would not look Tom in the eye and this suited him perfectly. He didn't want to mingle with the weak anyway.
And she was weak, it was an accidental experiment in power, that incident. He had captured her for a moment with his mind, wrapped his web round her and slowly leeched the blood or consciousness from her until she was drained and filled with his ideas. You did not see the snake or me. You did not see the snake or me. Or did you? Tell them you saw a snake, tell them what I can do.
Only the snakes understood what he was until one day, a strange man came to the orphanage and when Tom was in the room with him, he could feel the power vibrating between them like radio static and the word wizard entered his mind. So he was different and there was a word for it, he was a wizard. And the weak, the humans, the beast feed, were Muggles and did not possess his power. His power was magic and in that moment with the rattling cupboard, he saw a wizard in control of his power fully and using his power for a purpose.
Tom wanted to learn then, to learn to harness his sense, his magic. Imagine, on a scale like that what he could do! And this was all petty, every bit of it. There was so much more in the world and if one day he could become as powerful as this thin candle of a man, he could do anything. He could be as a God, he could be God or a devil laboring under the delusions of the righteous, the thought of what good and evil exactly was. He'd learned from the man what he had been doing was not good and though his, Tom's, tone remained civil, he scoffed inside. That didn't matter, what he did was powerful.
His kind was a dying breed, a superior breed and in those last few months before he left the orphanage, he felt the weakness and the inferiority brushing against him, pushing at his mind, cracking his windows. It was as if they were possessed with a disease, but he was the one who possessed something different. Mere pink humans rustling in the penumbra of a growing shadow of his own power.
Humankind will seek out and destroy and Tom, though a wizard, was human, but he was also as animal and this world was the jungle. They were blind and his teeth were sharpened and he could smell the blood. And though it infuriated him, the thought of Dumbledore's considerable power and his inability to match it, it comforted him that one day Dumbledore would die and Tom would still be here; hidden away in corners and pockets of the world, pieces of himself, waiting for coming and coming, when he could return and wash the world clean again and again and he alone would the dominate species, the one with the wits and the instincts and the control. He planned for eternity.
He didn't plan very well.
PG, Tom Riddle, Gen
An alternate look a the boy who would become Voldemort.
Over the centuries, over the millions of years of evolution, the human species has a supremacy over all living things, or so we think. Bloodthristy and with a need for expansion, growth and domination, our wits sharpen like the knives we use to cut hide, but our animalistic instincts grow duller as our brain capacity overtakes any need for a hyper-sensitive olfactory system. We have binoculars and telescopes, we no longer need our eyes. And even if our sense of hearing was sharp, we wouldn't be able to tell over factory slams and machinery whirring. But take consideration for a man and a beast in combat; instinct will conquer shrewdness. A man without his magnifying glasses and guns is no more mighty than a blind mole, bumbling about in a world of dull sensory while the predators catch and feast.
Or at least that's how Tom understood it and that's how he approached what he called his sixth sense. Although it wasn't exactly a sixth sense as it controlled all the five but added things, like the ability to command with his mind and strange languages. For years after discovering the difference between man and animal, he considered himself an animal. Human in appearance, but sharper in ways that his mere mortal companions weren't. It didn't take him long after to realize that no, he wasn't not human, he was superhuman. In the quiet understanding only children can have, he knew in the back of his mind, he was different; but Tom wasn't any child and he knew it was a good difference.
In time that quiet understanding was soon honed into a brilliant understanding of his own capabilities.
A garter snake in a park, he knew what it wanted. A child possessing something he had, he could have it. He could make someone hurt if he wanted and he often did and this did not confuse or upset him. Rather, his only bursts of happiness were post-wicked, secret laughter he would allow himself hiding behind his bed as he heard crying or shouts. And then he was the lion in the cave ripping apart its kill, something gained with advantage that the prey did not possess. And he would lean his head against the dirty boards of the walls and be lost in his ecstasy and then hours after, still smile at turned backs, never feeling sorry. For they were weaker and it was his job as the great devourer of the weak to exact his small bursts of power. Because that's what it all came down to, power, who had it and who did not. He did and he was dominant over them. It was only right.
Around age ten the fear started to cause suspicion; people wouldn't look him in the eyes, once a girl caught him talking to a small snake he kept in a cigar box he found in the rubbish bins outside, a snake from the park. She heard hissing and Tom's hissing reply. The snake was only grateful; he would be a meal for a bird and Tom, lost in his secret language did not notice the door opening and the unruly blond pigtails peering in curiously.
It only took a moment before he saw her and she didn't speak to him again. She didn't exactly speak to anyone after. Tom promised he never laid a finger on her, and that was true, but he did touch her ... not with hands, not with a five sense, but with the sixth, touched her in the mind and he himself wasn't exactly sure, but she was confused afterward, only wanted to talk of snakes. She came out of her spell months later and could not remember any of it but still would not look Tom in the eye and this suited him perfectly. He didn't want to mingle with the weak anyway.
And she was weak, it was an accidental experiment in power, that incident. He had captured her for a moment with his mind, wrapped his web round her and slowly leeched the blood or consciousness from her until she was drained and filled with his ideas. You did not see the snake or me. You did not see the snake or me. Or did you? Tell them you saw a snake, tell them what I can do.
Only the snakes understood what he was until one day, a strange man came to the orphanage and when Tom was in the room with him, he could feel the power vibrating between them like radio static and the word wizard entered his mind. So he was different and there was a word for it, he was a wizard. And the weak, the humans, the beast feed, were Muggles and did not possess his power. His power was magic and in that moment with the rattling cupboard, he saw a wizard in control of his power fully and using his power for a purpose.
Tom wanted to learn then, to learn to harness his sense, his magic. Imagine, on a scale like that what he could do! And this was all petty, every bit of it. There was so much more in the world and if one day he could become as powerful as this thin candle of a man, he could do anything. He could be as a God, he could be God or a devil laboring under the delusions of the righteous, the thought of what good and evil exactly was. He'd learned from the man what he had been doing was not good and though his, Tom's, tone remained civil, he scoffed inside. That didn't matter, what he did was powerful.
His kind was a dying breed, a superior breed and in those last few months before he left the orphanage, he felt the weakness and the inferiority brushing against him, pushing at his mind, cracking his windows. It was as if they were possessed with a disease, but he was the one who possessed something different. Mere pink humans rustling in the penumbra of a growing shadow of his own power.
Humankind will seek out and destroy and Tom, though a wizard, was human, but he was also as animal and this world was the jungle. They were blind and his teeth were sharpened and he could smell the blood. And though it infuriated him, the thought of Dumbledore's considerable power and his inability to match it, it comforted him that one day Dumbledore would die and Tom would still be here; hidden away in corners and pockets of the world, pieces of himself, waiting for coming and coming, when he could return and wash the world clean again and again and he alone would the dominate species, the one with the wits and the instincts and the control. He planned for eternity.
He didn't plan very well.