as curtains close on us

chapter 8: tom

Where does one start?

Tom Marvolo Riddle - a name you detest. You breathed the air of pureblood supremacy before you even so much as heard of the Wizarding world.

And you have grown from that, only that. It seems buried deep in your charisma that your charm, your intelligence - should all be exploited in malice.

People are not born good or evil. You made a decision, a conscious decision. It was not when you hurt the other children from your orphanage, or when you were sorted into Slytherin house, or even when you murdered your first victim, at the age of fifteen.

Even murderers can change for the better.

No, it was when you decided to forgo friends, forgo trust, forgo love. You chose not to love or be loved the way a child chooses to play with matches, and you exist now, the fruit of that choice, scarred and twisted and torn beyond repair.

You know love - you know it in the face your father gave you, in the name your mother gave you, in the kindness with which you were treated under Dumbledore's futile car.

So Dumbledore was wrong in that aspect. You understand love better than anyone. You have had it, and now you lack it, but you spent so long searching it out that you finally decided it simply was not worthwhile.

Which may be the reason why you're dead, now.

It used to be said that you couldn't die, not completely. That you weren't human enough to.

That was your goal. To forgo death, the same way you have forgone love. If one can escape death - can escape judgment - then one is quite literally invincible. If one can just barely remain alive, then one is capable of all things.

But what you have so foolishly done, Tom, is in your quest to make yourself eternal you have forgotten everything else.

You have forgotten friendship; you have forgotten trust; you have forgotten how to fight, and how to accept, and how to change. Yyou have forgottn how to choose. You have forgotten how to adapt.

And so now you are only a static creature, your soul all but destroyed - instead of strengthening it, amplifying it, you have weakened it. Yes, you cannot die - maybe not completely; even now, your chosen evil lurks in the hearts of old followers - but you cannot live either.

You have pushed yourself to the point of oblivion.

So now, return to your graveyards and to your chambers and to your orphanages. Where young Tom Riddle lurks, Voldemort does not.

And where Voldemort does not lurk, you are not good... you are not evil. Even murderers, as they say, can change for the better.